Listen to build loyalty: what customer listening system should you put in place to boost your customers' experience and satisfaction? At a time when improving the customer experience is one of the major challenges facing companies, how can you ensure that your customer experience strategy is aligned with your customers' expectations?
That's why, at iQo, we're convinced that listening to customers is an essential lever for improving customer knowledge, loyalty and satisfaction.
Contents
Questions to ask before setting up a customer listening system
The ultimate aim of a customer feedback system is to improve customer satisfaction and experience. However, it must also be designed with employees in mind.
In fact, the system must be useful to them, generating actionable customer insights to improve the relevance of the product/service offering and the efficiency of processes.
So it's important to co-construct the listening system with employees.
There are 4 main questions to ask when launching a customer listening process:
- What challenges must your customer listening system meet?
- What types of customers will the system target?
- What customer listening methods should be put in place to meet the challenges addressed by the system?
- How can we bring the customer listening system to life internally?
What challenges must your customer listening system meet?
Setting up a customer listening system can meet a number of challenges:
- Forward-looking, anticipating future customer behavior, expectations and needs
- and/or corrective actions, to improve existing offers or processes.
That's why you first need to identify the issue(s) you want to address, so you can determine the most effective ways of doing so.
These challenges can be applied across the entire product/service value chain.
Anticipating new customer behaviors
Develop prospect/customer knowledge (expectations, irritants, behaviors, etc.)
Gather new project ideas
Co-constructing new products/services with customers
Improving product quality
Measuring and monitoring customer satisfaction
Know how customers perceive an existing route, offer or service
Improve management of customer complaints
Develop customer commitment and loyalty
Improve your brand image
Integrate the customer vision at the heart of corporate decisions and strategy
Disseminate customer culture among employees
What types of customers will the customer care system target?
Once you've identified the priority issues for your customer listening system, you'll need to determine the types of customers it will address.
For example, they could be :
- end consumers (the users of your products and services);
- specifiers (who will advise on / implement your products and services) ;
- distributor (making your products and services available to consumers).
You can also perform segmentation of these customer typologies according to their profile (age, gender, country, socio-professional category, merchant / e-merchant...).
What customer listening methods should be put in place to meet the challenges addressed by the system?
There are many practical ways of listening to customers. However, it is important to choose a method or methods based on the priority issues defined above . Here are a few examples:
-
Customer survey :
Send out questionnaires combining quanti and quali to gather their impressions
Example: GRDF surveys installers after each gas connection -
Poll :
Testing an idea or project with a panel of customers
Example: FDJ calls on a panelist to propose a current company project to a sample of prospects in order to gather their opinions -
Call for projects :
Enable customers/prospects to submit project proposals
Example: La Banque Postale has launched a major citizen consultation to imagine the bank services of tomorrow. -
Customer workshop:
Involve customers/prospects in offer/service design workshops
Example: Oui SNCF runs monthly workshops with customers to test and design new digital services. -
Club users :
Form a group of loyal customers who can be mobilized to evaluate ideas, co-construct new solutions, etc.
Example: AG2R La Mondiale has created a senior user club to test partner solutions. -
Immersion / customer contact :
Invite all employees to make regular contact with customers to identify irritants and understand their behavior.
Example: Malakoff Humanis organizes the recall of all dissatisfied customers by its employees, including top management, as part of a customer satisfaction improvement program. -
Community website
Create a community of customers to generate mutual support and strengthen their commitment
Example: Blablacar has created a community of "Helpers", tasked with developing the practice of carpooling and guiding "lost" users.
A good practice is toaccompany this type of system with broader market watch and research actions to anticipate future customer behavior and needs.
How can we bring the customer listening system to life internally?
A customer listening system will only be truly successful if a process is put in place to manage and exploit the data collected.
This data must be relayed more widely within the company, beyond the scope of the Marketing and/or Customer Relations Departments, to contribute to the development of a customer culture among all employees, including top management.
This is what we call broadcasting the "Voice of the Customer".
The Voice of the Customer must be regularly communicated to employees to help them integrate the customer vision into the heart of their activities.
It is also advisable to regularly challenge the listening system with employees, so that it can be better adapted to their needs.
A customer listening system is therefore a tool that will enable you toimprove your customers' satisfaction and experience, and contribute to the development of your employees' customer culture .
Its implementation must be the subject of a cross-company company-wide approach, involving all employeesto build a system that effectively responds to their challenges and expectations.
ILLUSTRATION
FDJ's Customer Department has created and made available to company employees a customer acculturation tool called the "Players Kit", containing personas for 5 types of player identified by the company.
These personas, built up through immersions with players to understand their behaviors, indicate moments of truth or action levers to reach them.
In this way, the kit helps employees to develop their customer knowledge. Teams can also use it as part of their projects, to ensure that they are in line with customer behavior.
Every year, FDJ's Customer Department asks its employees about the relevance of its listening system, in order to gather their expectations and ideas for improvement.
How can iQo help you meet your customer experience needs?
iQo is a new player in the consulting sector, whose mission is to "unleash collective genius to co-construct desirable futures".
Our firm offers a unique approach to co-construction with our customers ...
- We advocate the hybridization of skills and know-how
- We do not accept small teams (squads) agile and sincerely committed to you, as an extension of your teams
- We are "makers and offer you concrete, results-based solutions tailored to your specific needs.
...and committed: we are a company with a mission, ISO 14001 certified and soon to be B-corp certified, and have co-constructed 23 For Good commitments with our employees.
Our Marketing & Customer Experience is structured around 5 themes:
- Customer Strategy,
- Customer experience innovation,
- Marketing & sales efficiency,
- Customer relationship efficiency
- Transformation-oriented customer.
We have developed specific expertise in the development of a customer-centric organization organization: building a customer experience strategy, setting up a customer listening system, disseminating the customer culture , ...
