It’s important to put all of VOC scores and feedback into the broader context – how well do you do stack up against your competitors? I’m talking about benchmarking, which means making comparisons to help you understand the perception of your business relative to the competition in the minds of your customers.

A brand promise is the expectations you set with your customers. It’s a combination of the brand purpose and the reality of what the brand can deliver. It defines the benefits a customer can expect to receive when experiencing your brand – at every touchpoint. Customers will select your brand because they know that, every time they choose your brand, they will have the same experience.

Companies can no longer buy customer loyalty and assume customers will stay. It is easy for customers to “click away” and buy from another vendor. Customer Experience Management is now a formal process that involves multiple processes and departments. It requires the mapping of customer touchpoints, and combines operational and CRM data with customer service and marketing information.

The Enterprise Feedback Management (EFM) market continues to grow, even amidst the current economic environment. The underlying cause of this growth appears to be increased customer retention through real-time voice of the the customer (VOC) programs. And there was certainly a lot of talk about this at the recent Gartner CRM conference in London. The fact that this is being talked about so much is evidence that the market has matured significantly in the past 12 months. The author of this blog, Chris Cottle, VP of Marketing for Allegiance, believes that the next big step for VOC programs will lie within the analytical side. Read this blog to find out why and also learn more about what this side will mean for businesses.