Ensuring Customer Satisfaction: CSAT and Voice of Customer (VOC)Find out why these 2 metrics are essential to understand your customers and improve your overall customer service experience

Keeping track of customer feedback can be a difficult process. In this article, we want to tell you about the two principal methods used by companies, along with the different ways they can be set up.

What are CSATs and VOC?

One of the most important aspects of a customer support call center is ensuring their customers have appropriate channels where they can communicate their requests, complaints and claims effectively. This is where Customer Satisfaction Surveys (CSATs) and Voice of Customer (VOC) come into play.

CSATs ask questions related to the experience your costumers had with the product or service you offer. It’s a rather short questionnaire, and includes a rating scale using numbers or other visual representations (happy/sad face, thumbs up/down).

Similarly, VOC provides information regarding customer preferences. These questions are more specific and their objective is to gather in-depth information about what your customers expect from your product, as well as aspects they like, dislike or rather get from using it.

What is the difference between CSAT and VOC?

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Although both metrics are usually performed together, it is important to know the aspects that differentiate them.

CSATs must be performed after customers have used your product or service, since they are all about experience. They can measure things like how satisfied the customer felt during the call with the live agent, how happy they feel about the product, or how likely they are to recommend it to others. The questions are pretty simple and straight-forward, answered either with a yes or no, or using a scale of numbers.

VOC are more specific questions; customers can answer using either preset answers or another option to share their opinion depending on the channel used. The questions are usually related to the customer’s answers during CSATs, which means they come after. If, for instance, the CSAT results show unhappy customers, the VOC would inquire about the reasons behind the low score. VOC also involves questions related to improvements your costumers might suggest for upcoming product updates, or how the customer care contact center could make their experience better.

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How can you implement these metrics into your customer service processes?

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Back in the day, CSATs and VOC were performed by the live agents, but this process proved to be time consuming both for the caller and the agent. Nowadays there are several options that allow your agents to focus on providing the appropriate resolution to customers and leave the tedious survey process in more efficient hands.

This is the case of automated services, which are essential in all contact centers nowadays, whether it is to have clear customer satisfaction scores, get real time information of clients’ experiences, or to have the necessary data to develop strategies to strengthen customer relationships with your business.

Here at Callzilla we use TomBot, a ChatBot that uses Artificial Intelligence to solve customer support queries in real time, sometimes being even more efficient than agents. This same ChatBot can be used to perform CSATs after support has been offered, so customers don’t need to receive any extra calls or be redirected somewhere else to report their experience.

As a complement of ChatBots, we also use VoiceBots, a software that uses speech recognition to help customers during a live call. VoiceBot actually acts as a tier 1 agent, providing the live agent with the appropriate information to help with the issue before receiving the call and avoiding having the caller repeat information previously given to the bot. This AI is also used right after the customer finishes the call with the live agent, in order to make the survey process a fast and organic one; If the VoiceBot was the one to welcome them to their customer support experience, it’s only right for the same VoiceBot to finalize the customer journey. This is also a great tool to make your customer care department a more inclusive one, giving the option to visually and physically impaired customers to share how their experience was.

All of these options are designed to obtain information on how a customer feels, but sometimes moments of improvement present themselves outside of these surveys, and it is important to have a strategy to identify such moments. Callzilla uses Speech Analytics, a software that goes through all calls and identifies certain moments that are relevant to improve processes, such as script compliance and agent performance. This same software is capable of identifying certain tones of voice and highlights those parts of the recording in order to be assessed by QA Specialists. Implementing this tool will help you cover all steps of customer interaction.

Combined, all these channels ensure having even more accurate data in the long term and leave your QA department with more time to focus on the most challenging cases and design strategies to improve customer satisfaction in an integrated way.

We understand getting these tools might be a huge step for your company, but there are cost effective options like outsourcing, that allows businesses to have all this for a lower rate than having to buy each system independently. Companies even outsource IT support teams, that way they don’t have to worry about monitoring them either.

Why is Callzilla your best option to improve customer satisfaction?

Here at Callzilla keeping our partners’ loyalty is of the utmost importance, and we know that keeping their customers happy is a big part of that. So taking this as one of our top priorities for 2021, we decided to renew ourselves into what we call Callzilla 2.1, and created a statement on our company’s vision of customer experience. This vision has always been ruled by 3 pillars; empathy, active listening, and resolution.

Without these three components, customer support cannot work. In order to ensure customer loyalty, people need to be given not only an answer, but the most accurate one. And no tool invented has managed to be sympathetic, read the people, or go beyond what it has stored in its memory like customer support agents. Live Agents are still essential to provide the best support we can and to make customers feel valued.

As previously mentioned, good customer experiences lead to client success, but there is a lot of work behind satisfying customers, and Callzilla knows it. Back in December 2020 our Client Success department sat down with us and shared the approach we are implementing to ensure client success.

They showed us that keeping customers goes beyond the support team; it requires the joint efforts of all departments (hiring, training, QA, IT), but also their understanding, because if one team is underperforming, all operations are affected. Our Client Success department is the bridge between us and our partners, because in their own words, “consistent communication on both sides is their key to success.”

They also shared with us their goals for 2021, and we are proud to say they delivered what they promised. Despite the situation we were living (and some of us are still living), our Client Success team focused on their “monthly checks”, where they could compile the different situations each department was going through and how it affected the perception customers and clients had regarding our operations.

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Their role in keeping processes running smoothly is a huge one, and despite all difficulties we endured this year our call center was awarded the Silver Stevie® Award for “Customer Service Team of the Year,” and Bronze Stevie® Award for ‘Contact Center or Customer Services Outsourcing Provider of the Year.’ This only shows how Callzilla is still at the top of their game, and we will keep working to improve for our business partners.

But, of course, we couldn’t be talking about how successful we are without mentioning some of the results our partners have gotten working with us; We had the chance of working with a renowned Ed-Tech company and updated their ChatBot in order to improve customer experience without additional cost. After four months the program showed a 34% solve rate, and the cost savings were above 40%.

We also worked with a leading provider of consumer products who wanted to dramatically improve customer experience. The results one month after partnering with us showed a 34% decrease on average handling time from agents, and an increase of CSATs by 21% after two months.

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In summary

CSATs and VOC play a huge part on quantifying customer satisfaction. It is important to provide our clients with the right channels so operations can improve and companies can grow. But this is not a one-size-fits-all solution. It is important to keep tabs on all departments to ensure operations are running smoothly, and have a clear communication channel where businesses can directly communicate their concerns.

What comes next?

The best part of customers having a great experience with your company is the possibility of them becoming leads for us. In the era of social media, the perception people have of our company is the difference between being acknowledged or forgotten. Social networks have become the new word of mouth, so providing an excellent customer service guarantees not only happy and loyal customers, but the possibility of reaching many more.

We hope this guide gave you a clear idea of the importance of CSATs and VOC for your customer support department. Our team has also created this complete guide for outsourcing, and why nearshore outsourcing might be the best option for your business. If you are ready to up your customer service experience reach out to us, we will be more than happy to provide a consultation on what might be the best strategies to improve your processes.

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About the Author: Neal Topf

Neal Topf, a seasoned contact center expert, is dedicated to transforming customer experiences. With years of industry wisdom, he guides businesses to excellence. His articles provide actionable insights for live answering, tech support, appointment scheduling, and implementing automated services, ensuring unparalleled customer experiences and operational efficiency.