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7 Voice of the Customer Methodologies To Drive Business Impact
Brand perception shapes market success. Apple stands for privacy and security. Samsung champions innovation. Woodland embodies toughness.
But these perceptions aren’t an overnight phenomenon. Nor are they by fluke. The biggest brands in the world proactively listen to their customers to corroborate if the Vox populi about the brands align with the brand goals!
So, how do customers perceive your brand?
This is where you need the voices of the customers (VoC) methodologies to listen to what customers think about your brand, how they compare you against competitors, and if they are truly satisfied or just sticking around.
Learn seven proven VoC methodologies to turn your customer’s conversations into actionable insights.
What is the voice of the customer?
Voice of the customer (VoC) is the process of capturing customer's expectations, preferences, and frustrations from different sources where they engage with your business.
Listening to their voice can help you make informed business decisions, enhance customer experience, and shape product/service strategies.
For example, OnePlus faced significant customer backlash due to a persistent green line issue on its smartphone displays, leading to widespread dissatisfaction.
Recognizing the gravity of the situation, OnePlus used VoC to listen to its customers and introduced the "Green Line Worry-Free Solution", a lifetime screen warranty. This strategic move helped restore customer trust and loyalty.
7 Top voice of the customer methodologies to drive business impact
There are many methods to listen to the voice of the customers, and we have listened to the seven best. But just so you know, there is no one standard VoC methodology.
Since your customer’s voice will flow from multiple touchpoints, depending upon your niche, business model, services offered, and so on, your VoC methodology must adapt to the unique requirements of your business.
Hence, you may use all or a few of these methods to listen to the VoC:
1. Surveys and polls
Customer surveys and polls are the gold standard of quantitative VoC strategies, though Gartner predicted that 60% of marketers will diversify VoC tools from surveys to voice and text sources. Don’t worry, this list has plenty of non-survey VoC methods for you to pick from!
Back to surveys: Using surveys and polls, you can get structured, measurable data on customer satisfaction (CSAT), net promoter score (NPS), preferences, and pain points.
For example, Dove embedded micro-surveys into its global “Real Beauty” campaign to gauge reactions to its inclusive messaging. It used in-app polls to ask customers, “How does this ad make you feel about your beauty?”
The results revealed a 25% surge in positive sentiment among North American women aged 18–35, prompting Dove to double down on authenticity-driven campaigns and refine product lines.
What you can do with surveys and polls
1. Segment customers for targeted surveys (e.g., by industry, size, behavior) to understand specific needs
2. Survey pain points to improve customer retention with personalized offers
3. Identify and replicate loyalty drivers (e.g., eco-friendly packaging, better user experience, etc.) from positive feedback
4. Quantify customer preferences via surveys to prioritize R&D
5. Use quick polls to validate new concepts before major investment
💡Pro tip: If you’re planning to use surveys to gather VoC data, use Sprinklr’s AI survey platform to build, design, and distribute surveys using simple commands, not complex coding.
Generative AI powers the end-to-end survey creation process — from distribution to reporting and actions — through sentiment and patterns analysis. AI also gives you relevant suggestions for the next steps powered by the survey data.
2. Social media listening and sentiment analysis
Social listening tracks real-time conversations in public platforms to gauge sentiment, spot trends, and uncover unspoken needs in the conversations. Social listening uses sentiment analysis to decode how your customers feel.
For example, in 2023, Barbie’s marketing team used social listening to spot a viral social media trend — fans were comparing Ken’s outfits in the movie to BTS star Jimin’s 2021 wardrobe.
By monitoring these conversations, team Barbie pivoted quickly, collaborating with actor Ryan Gosling to create a playful video mimicking Jimin’s dance move.
The campaign generated significant tweets (now X post) engagement and millions of Instagram reel impressions.
What you can do with social listening and sentiment analysis
1. Create better content for the future by analyzing sentiments around your existing campaigns
2. Swiftly address complaints during a crisis and rebuild trust using real-time sentiment analysis
3. Uncover unmet needs and product gaps by tracking trending public sentiments around your brand
4. Quantify the emotional impact of campaigns on digital and traditional channels — before and after launch — to measure your campaign performance
5. Integrate sentiment data into CRM for targeted engagement and personalize customer interactions
6. Benchmark against competitors’ share of voice against yours for benchmark, uncovering competitive advantage and strategic opportunities
💡Pro tip: Use Sprinklr’s AI-powered social listening platform to understand unstructured customer data from multiple channels for an exceptional VoC program.
Track mentions across public conversation streams, analyze their sentiment in multiple languages, and highlight emerging themes. Machine learning will predict trends, generate reports,
3. Customer interviews and focus groups
Customer interviews and focus groups cut through the noise of unstructured data to uncover the “why” behind their behaviors.
These qualitative methods dive deep into your customers’ motivations, frustrations, and unmet needs, offering rich insights that surveys alone can’t capture.
Zoom once hosted virtual focus groups with remote workers to understand post-pandemic challenges. Participants revealed that fragmented workflows between video calls and project management tools drained productivity.
Zoom used these insights to launch Zoom Scheduler, which integrates calendar blocking, task assignments, and Asana/Trello syncs directly into meetings. The feature reduces app-switching fatigue, driving an increase in enterprise subscriptions.
What you can do with customer interviews and focus groups
- Uncover customer pain points and preferences that quantitative data can miss
- Fuel hyper-personalized experiences and inform product roadmaps
- Test proposed strategic directions and product/service innovations before large-scale investment
- Involve customers in the early stages of solution design for inherently customer-centric products and solutions
- Pivot quickly during high-stakes crisis moments, such as adjusting features during beta testing to avoid costly post-launch fixes
4. Customer support data
Customer support data ranges from call logs and chat transcripts to email interactions and other engagement touchpoints.
You can use the support conversations (as voice or text) to identify recurring issues, and pain points that customers face by analyzing these interactions. This data reveals what’s working and pinpoints what requires immediate improvement.
Delta Airlines analyzed support interactions to identify frequent inquiries about flight delays, baggage handling, and reservation changes.
By aggregating these insights, Delta updated its online knowledge base with clear, actionable solutions and launched real-time operations support hub and baggage handling technology.
This initiative significantly reduced repetitive inquiries, improved resolution times, and boosted overall customer satisfaction.
What you can do with customer support data
- Capture the frontline perspectives on recurring customer challenges and product usability issues
- Implement agent suggestions and insights into product development and process optimization cycles
- Optimize staffing, training, and resource allocation to improve response times, reduce costs, and enhance operational efficiency
- Identify frequently asked "how-to" or easily resolved questions and develop robust knowledge bases, FAQs, or self-service tools to deflect common inquiries and empower customers
- Analyze sentiment on support interactions (chat, voice transcripts) to gauge customer emotional responses beyond issue resolution
- Target process improvements or agent training to mitigate negative experiences and enhance customer satisfaction
💡Pro tip : Use Sprinklr’s consumer intelligence platform to gauge the voice of the customer and sentiment from all touchpoints, including your support agent conversations.
Establish a regular review process with your cross-functional teams to analyze support data and sentiment trends. Use this continuous feedback loop to refine support processes, ensuring your customer service evolves with your customers’ needs.
5. Net promoter score (NPS)
Net promoter score (NPS) measures customer loyalty by asking one simple question: “How likely are you to recommend us?”
Scores range from detractors (0-6) to passives (7-8) and promoters (9–10). It’s a pulse check on customer sentiment, turning abstract loyalty into actionable data.
USAA used its NPS program to identify dissatisfied customers, triggering targeted actions such as personalized follow-ups and process improvements.
USAA achieved an impressive NPS of 75 with this proactive approach, which directly informed customer retention strategies and drove enhancements in customer experience.
NPS insights can help you identify both immediate issues and long-term trends. The real-time feedback minimizes churn and cultivates brand advocates, impacting customer loyalty and revenue growth.
What you can do with net promoters' score
- Turn negative experiences around by immediately contacting detractors and passives post NPS surveys to resolve stated issues
- Identify recurring themes and pain points that drive scores, especially low scores
- Measure and benchmark NPS against industry standards and internal targets
- Enable frontline teams (sales, support, service, success) to analyze customer sentiment in real-time and adapt to interactions
🔥 If you use Sprinklr : Deploy conversational NPS surveys right in your chatbot conversations using Sprinklr online survey software. You can simply pick from pre-set questions to launch your NPS survey—no coding required.
For example, after your chatbot or support agent has concluded a conversation, your customers get a text prompt to rate their experience in the same chat thread. In this way, you can prevent survey fatigue from additional requests while capturing critical insights when customers are most likely to share their thoughts.
🔖 Deep dive: How to improve the net promoter score of your brand
6. Behavioral analytics: website and product usage data
Tracking customer behavior on your website and within your product offers invaluable insights into how users interact with your digital environment.
Monitor clicks, page views, session durations, heatmaps, and feature usage to uncover patterns that reveal what customers value and where they encounter obstacles.
Use the data to identify areas for improvement, refine features, and tailor the user experience to meet customer needs better.
For example, Slack uses product usage analytics to continuously optimize its platform. It identifies friction points and refines its features by monitoring metrics such as channel activity, direct messaging frequency, file-sharing behavior, and integration usage.
This iterative process drives higher engagement and smoother communication and boosts overall user retention.
What you can do with website and product usage data
- Analyze website/product exit pages, drop-off rates in workflows, and error occurrences to directly identify user struggles
- Use browsing history and product feature adoption data to segment users and tailor website content, in-app guidance, or support interactions
- Use website content consumption and feature usage frequency data to make informed decisions on content creation, feature enhancements, and product roadmap prioritization
- Identify declining product usage or website visit frequency trends indicating potential churn
- Use predictive insight to proactively reach customers with tailored support or engagement strategies
💡 Pro tip : Establish a routine for A/B testing based on website and product usage analytics. To get a 360-degree overview of your customer’s voice across the product life cycle, use Sprinklr's Product Insights.
Listen to conversations where your customers talk about your product with the broadest coverage and get AI to sieve the most relevant conversations to focus on, eliminating competitors' reviews and things you don’t need.
7. Close the feedback loop
Closing the feedback loop means not only gathering customer feedback but also acting on it. This approach creates a culture of continuous improvement and demonstrates to customers that their voices truly matter, boosting satisfaction and loyalty.
For instance, LEGO invites fans to submit ideas for new sets through the LEGO Ideas platform. When an idea reaches a set number of votes, it enters a review process where LEGO collaborates with the creator to refine the concept.
Many of these ideas have led to officially released LEGO sets, proving that customer feedback can directly influence product development and innovation.
What you can do to close the feedback loop
- Personalize acknowledgments where feasible, setting clear expectations on review timelines and next steps in the feedback process
- Deploy a cross-functional feedback analysis team with representatives from relevant departments (e.g., product, service, operations) to review and translate customer insights into actionable recommendations
- Create structured action plans with clearly defined owners, timelines, and measurable objectives to address pain points, driving tangible improvements in products, services, or processes
- Proactively communicate “closed loop” updates to customers about the actions taken in response to their input to demonstrate the value and impact of their contributions
🔥 If you use Sprinklr: You can increase the odds of closing a feedback loop with omnichannel routing. Sprinklr AI can detect customers’ intent and sentiment across voice and digital conversations and auto-assign cases to the best-suited agents based on skills, capacity, historical utilization and more.
🔖 Don’t miss: Customer feedback: How to collect and analyze (latest guide)
How you can use the voice of the customer methodologies to drive impact
Here’s how you can start:
Identify pain points and optimize experiences
Pinpoint precise areas where your customers face friction by analyzing VoC data, such as surveys, in-app feedback, and behavioral analytics.
They can refine your customer journey by streamlining processes, simplifying user interfaces, and tailoring messaging to address specific concerns.
Under Armour analyzed its customers’ purchase behaviors and discovered that complicated payment processes were a key friction point.
The sportswear brand simplified the checkout layout and offered financing options (like Klarna) alongside traditional payment methods. This addressed the major pain point giving customers greater flexibility and confidence.
Inform product and service development with VoC insights
VoC methodologies, such as customer interviews, surveys, and usability tests, offer clear signals on user preferences, feature demands, and market gaps.
These insights can help you refine your product or service offerings by aligning them more closely with customer desire, driven by customer feedback and usage data.
For example, OpenAI introduced voice and vision features to its ChatGPT mobile app when users requested more natural, hands-free interaction and image-based queries.
ChatGPT expanded beyond text-only interactions allowing customers to provide audio and visual prompts—a step informed by analyzing customer inputs.
Enhance customer loyalty through personalized engagement
VoC data reveals customer pain points and highlights what truly resonates with your audience. You can tailor your marketing and external communications by analyzing feedback from surveys, purchase histories, and customer interactions. This personalized engagement builds trust and fosters long-term customer loyalty.
Nike’s "Nike By You" platform exemplifies this approach. It empowers consumers to personalize everything — from color to material.
This initiative boosts customer satisfaction and provides invaluable data on consumer preferences. Such insights enable Nike to refine its default product range and strategically control pricing for its mass-market offerings.
Benefits of VoC methodologies for large organizations
Here’s how VoC methodologies help your enterprise:
Personalized experience design
Personalized customer experience drives engagement and loyalty. According to Gartner, 71% of B2C and 86% of B2B customers expect brands to be well-informed about their personal information during an interaction. VoC methodologies help you refine personalization strategies by analyzing customer preferences and behaviors.
Streaming platforms like Netflix and Spotify use VoC insights to track viewing and listening habits and recommend content tailored to individual preferences.
🔖 You may like: An 8-step plan to deliver personalized customer service
Proactive issue resolution
According to Gartner, 38% of Gen Z and Millennial customers abandon a customer service issue if they can’t resolve it through self-service. With VoC methodologies you can anticipate and fix problems before they arise.
AI-driven sentiment analysis can detect dissatisfaction early, helping you:
- Optimize self-service options
- Streamline support
- Prevent potential customer churn
Proactive issue resolution builds trust and enhances customer satisfaction by eliminating friction points.
🔖 Related read: What is proactive customer service?
Competitive differentiation
Customers switch brands when they find better value elsewhere. VoC methodologies will help you track preferences, market gaps, and help you innovate and stay competitive.
Smartphone brands, for example, use VoC insights to prioritize customer-driven upgrades like AI-powered cameras or extended battery life. When brands consistently evolve based on customer expectations, they maintain differentiation, relevance, and a strong market presence.
🔖 Also read: What is competitive benchmarking?
Data-driven decision-making
Gartner predicts that by 2026, 65% of B2B sales organizations will transition from intuition-based to data-driven decision-making. VoC methodologies transform customer feedback into strategic intelligence, reducing reliance on intuition.
You can optimize investments in product development, service enhancements, and experience design by analyzing customer’s voices. With the data, you can ensure your team allocates resources where they matter most, maximizing impact and minimizing waste.
Customers’ voices come from many sources! Listen to them all in one place with Sprinklr Insights
Sprinklr Insights, powered by generative AI, predictive analytics, and sentiment analysis, captures customer feedback from every channel.
All insights land in a single dashboard — structured, consumable, and ready to drive action. Curious to see how it works for your business? Claim your free demo today 🚀
Frequently Asked Questions
Combine survey data, social listening, and interviews using a unified CXM platform like Sprinklr. Build a central dashboard that merges quantitative and qualitative insights for a full view of customer feedback.
No single method fits all. NPS is popular for its simplicity but pairing it with social media listening offers deeper insights into loyalty drivers.
Yes. VoC methods pinpoint issues and dissatisfaction early. Acting on these insights can improve product experiences and lower churn rates.
Use a diverse mix of feedback channels. Combine randomized surveys, social media monitoring, and targeted focus groups to capture input from all customer segments.
Absolutely. AI automates data collection, identifies patterns, and predicts trends. It turns raw feedback into actionable insights, making VoC data more effective.
