Gartner for Customer Service

Go Beyond
VoC Surveys to
Understand Your
Customer
 Go Beyond VoC Surveys to Understand Your Customer

Currently, customer surveys have limited value due

to low response rates and narrow answers. Customer
service and support leaders need to rethink their
VoC strategy and use other approaches and tools
beyond surveys to gain valuable insight, creating
an intelligence center of customer data.

Deborah Alvord
VP Analyst

Published 29 September 2022 - ID G00778327

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 Go Beyond VoC Surveys to Understand Your Customer

Overview
Key Findings
• Customer surveys are deployed by 94% of customer service (CS)
organizations, but Gartner research shows that customer service and
support leaders perceive them to bring less value than other methods
of voice of the customer (VoC) collection.
• Customer service and support leaders struggle to make actionable
decisions with survey data due to low response rates, with an average
response rate of 23%. Thirty-eight percent of leaders say their response
rate is in the single digits.
• Surveys fail to capture feedback that is shared by customers beyond the
answers to the questions asked, creating a huge gap in knowledge about
customer expectations and CX.
Recommendations
To truly understand the complete customer experience and realize the most
value from a VoC program, customer service and support leaders must:
• Capture more in-depth, actionable and holistic customer insights by
using other VoC tools and methods that collect indirect and inferred
feedback.
• Change survey strategy to gather insights that cannot be captured
through indirect feedback and inferred analytics, by deploying
repurposed surveys.

• Customer service and support leaders face constant pressure to improve

their understanding of customers and demonstrate the value of their
VoC programs.

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 Go Beyond VoC Surveys to Understand Your Customer

Strategic Planning Assumption

By 2025, Gartner predicts that 60% of service organizations will adopt Figure 1: Survey Deployment, Current and Future (2026)
analytics technologies to supplement traditional surveys by analyzing Percentage of Respondents, Customer Surveys
voice and text interactions with customers.

Introduction
Surveys are the VoC tool of choice for customer service and support leaders
when it comes to capturing direct customer feedback. Ninety-four percent
of service organizations report that they have launched customer surveys,
and they expect that number to increase in the future (see Figure 1). Most
organizations launch surveys because they are low effort to deploy, some
survey tools are free and implementation can be quick.

Unfortunately, survey pitfalls create issues with the value of the customer
data collected:

• Surveys often have a limited number of questions to prevent customer

abandonment.

• Survey questions tend to be more generalized to capture an overall score,

such as, “Were you satisfied with your experience?” leading to a lack of
specificity in responses.

• Customer feedback is limited to the questions asked, which may not include
questions about their needs.

• Survey respondents may not represent your full customer base. This is
n = 87 customer service and support leaders
especially the case if not all customer segments are sampled, if a certain Source: 2021 Gartner Technology Roadmap Survey
demographic chooses to respond more than others or if only those who
have a strong negative or positive sentiment respond.

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 Go Beyond VoC Surveys to Understand Your Customer

• Surveys can be biased if they contain leading questions, if the number of Figure 2: VoC Deployment, Current and Future (2026)
response options are limited or if customers only select extreme answers Percentage of Respondents
(i.e., best or worst) due to culture or indifference.

• Surveys require customer effort, leading to survey fatigue. Current Deployment

Predicted Future Deployment
Additionally, limiting a VoC program to only surveys creates additional
challenges. Data that is incomplete or biased can lead to chasing wrong
assumptions or making unnecessary changes, because organizations don’t Digital 53%
have the full customer experience picture. Also, most current VoC feedback Analytics 68%
strategies do not include listening to the huge amount of unsolicited
customer feedback that is provided during recorded calls, chats, online
45%
reviews and community forums. If collected, this untapped customer Social Media
Analytics 59%
data would help demonstrate the strategic value of customer service
and to move CS from a cost center to an intelligence center.
Sentiment 40%
This research explains indirect and inferred methods of feedback to better Analytics 66%
capture actionable and insightful results that will improve the ROI of your
VoC program, along with how to repurpose your survey so that it brings
Speech 36%
more value. Analytics 65%

Text 32%
Analytics 54%

0% 35% 70%

n = 87
Source: 2021 Gartner Technology Roadmap Survey

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Analysis
Collect Indirect and Inferred Feedback
VoC programs of the future will be much less reliant on surveys. The use
of indirect and inferred feedback is expected to rise in the next four years,
with speech analytics seeing the largest anticipated increase (see Figure 2).
Customer service and support leaders should invest in these analytics to go
beyond surveys so that they can stay competitive (see Invest in Your Speech
and Text Analytics Initiative Now, or Fall Behind Your Competition).
A typical post-transaction survey will collect basic experience information,
such as satisfaction of rep knowledge or time to resolve, and the answers only
come from a small percentage of customers who choose to respond. However,
a tremendous amount of information is stored in recorded calls, chats and
other channels that are untapped. Customer service and support leaders
should prioritize capturing indirect and inferred feedback to provide the most
valuable and actionable insight from this data that isn’t captured in surveys
(see Table 1).
Indirect Feedback
Speech analytics is anticipated to have the largest growth in deployment
in the coming years and is a very effective method of listening for indirect
feedback. Customer service and support leaders can use speech analytics
to data mine all recorded customer phone interactions, which are full of
customer comments and feedback. Speech analytics can listen to those
interactions for statements from the customer that indicate a repeat call,
sentiment regarding a company policy, effort with the process, failures
with digital channels and more (see Quick Answer: What Speech and
Text Analytics Use Cases Drive ROI?).
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Go Beyond VoC Surveys to Understand Your Customer
Social media analytics and text analytics capture indirect written feedback
that customers would share on the company’s community forum, a Facebook
page, a chat interaction or in the free text comment field on a survey, for
example. When you ask for a Customer Effort Score (CES) on a survey, you
will only get a response from a fraction of your customers or a CES that
doesn’t provide the root cause of the effort. To remedy this, use indirect
feedback to listen to 100% of your interactions. You will hear from every
customer about what parts of the journey are creating high effort and why.
This enables organizations to have more confidence in what actions to take
to correct performance and spend less time identifying root causes.
During customer conversations, they may also mention indirect feedback
about a product or marketing campaign, or a failure in the order process.
This indirect information would be very valuable to other business units.
By collecting this information and sharing it with other groups, customer
service and support leaders can demonstrate that the wealth of customer
data creates a strategic value of service, helping to turn service and
support from a cost center into an intelligence center (see Case Study:
Communicate VoC Feedback to the Product Team to Improve CX and
Reduce Servicing Costs).
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Table 1: Three Types of Customer Feedback
Direct Feedback
What It Is What customers say when
you ask them.
Collection Methods • Surveys
• Focus groups
• Customer advisory boards
Example Sources • Post-transaction survey
(assisted or self-service)
Feedback Examples Responses to post-transaction
survey questions:
• Was your issue resolved?
Response = No
• How satisfied are you with the
knowledge of the agent?
Response = 4 (on a 5-point scale)
Source: Gartner (September 2022)
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Indirect Feedback
What customers say to you/about
you that is unprompted.
• Speech analytics
• Sentiment analysis
• Text analytics
• Social media analytics
• Recorded interaction (phone, chat)
• Tweets mentioning the company
• Online reviews/ratings
• Community forums
Comments during a phone
interaction:
• “This billing statement is so
confusing.”
• “I can’t believe my printer died.
It’s only four months old.”
• “The last agent I spoke to…”
• “I’m so frustrated right now!”
• “I couldn’t find the answers online”
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Go Beyond VoC Surveys to Understand Your Customer
Inferred Feedback
What customers are doing.
• Digital analytics
• Operations data connected to the
customer journey (i.e., abandon
rate, wait time, callbacks, etc.)
• Customer self-service/mobile
app journey
• Customer product usage
• Customer purchase history
• Customer abandoned the chatbot.
• Customer stopped engaging with
the community forum.
• Customer recently purchased
multiple products exceeding $2,000.
8

Inferred Feedback
To complement capturing what customers are saying, customer service and
support leaders should also capture what customers are doing. Analyzing
customer behaviors and actions provides insight known as inferred VoC
feedback. Analyzing the path that customers take on a self-help or mobile
app site — along with the number of clicks, whether they go to Contact Us
or if they abandon the site — provides inferred details regarding pain points
in channel design, customer need, effort or sentiment.
Incorporating indirect and inferred feedback to your VoC strategy will offer
a wealth of insight and a much more holistic view of your customer, that a
survey alone cannot capture. This analytics capability enables customer
service and support leaders to make better decisions about customer
service delivery that are based on the needs and expectations of the
customer, increasing the value of their VoC program.
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Go Beyond VoC Surveys to Understand Your Customer
Deploy Repurposed Surveys
Analytics on indirect and inferred feedback will arm customer service and
support leaders with expanded and new customer data that will answer many
critical questions. However, sometimes indirect and inferred data may be
missing some needed insight in order to take action or to confirm the needed
action, so direct feedback may be needed. In this case, capturing direct
feedback through a survey is very appropriate. Instead of asking the typical
questions commonly found in a survey such as a general satisfaction
question, organizations should redesign the survey to only ask the questions
absolutely necessary to fill in that knowledge gap. To whom the survey is
sent and the length of deployment time will be dynamic based on the
information you need to collect. By repurposing surveys, customer
service and support leaders will:
• Collect targeted customer insights that answer specific gaps in knowledge,
creating more ROI for the survey process.
• Lessen the number of surveys sent, thus minimizing the time and resources
needed for a survey program.
• Reduce survey fatigue while simultaneously gaining more customer
feedback.
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 Go Beyond VoC Surveys to Understand Your Customer

Evidence
This research is based on conversations with customer service and support
leaders, experts throughout Gartner and data from the 2021 Gartner
Technology Roadmap Survey. This survey evaluated value and deployment
trends for 51 established and emerging technologies. We conducted an online
survey of 89 customer service and support leaders across a range of industries
and business types from 20 May through 29 June 2021. Participants were
screened for their familiarity and involvement with the value and deployment
of customer service and support technologies at their organizations.

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 Go Beyond VoC Surveys to Understand Your Customer

How Gartner helps customer service leaders adapt Diagnostics and Guides and toolkits Expert inquiry
and stay ahead benchmarks

Service and support leaders face constant pressure to improve their

understanding of customers and demonstrate the value of their VoC Expert research Live events Peer connections

programs. Gartner can help customer support leaders rethink their

VoC strategy and use other approaches and tools beyond surveys to
gain valuable insight, creating an intelligence center of customer data. Case studies and best Webinars and online Document reviews
practices learning events

How Gartner supports you as a client:

Diagnose current state
Meet with an expert to evaluate how
you are capturing voice-of-the-customer
data today.
Develop your plan
Incorporate recommendations found in
Building a VoC Strategy for Measuring
Customer Experiences in Service when
developing a strategy for collecting
customer data
Execute and drive change
Work with a Gartner expert to determine
how to measure the success of your VoC
program through effective metrics and
measurements.

Benchmark your voice-of-the-customer
operations and capabilities with Benchmark
Analysis of Customer Service Voice-of-the-
Customer Programs.
Meet with an expert to review your
draft VoC collection methods and
receive feedback.
Avoid common pitfalls with your customer
data collection strategy by incorporating the
recommendations in Three Key Decisions to
Prevent Your Voice of the Customer Strategy
From Falling Into Disarray

Read Go Beyond VoC Surveys to Truly Read Quick Answer: What Speech and Read Accelerate Identification of Actionable
Understand Your Customer to understand the Text Analytics use Cases Drive ROI? to learn VoC Insights With Speech Analytics to learn
importance of implementing other methods how to effectively capture indirect and how to effectively identify the volume and
of VoC, reducing reliance on surveys. inferred data from customer interactions. value of actionable insight.

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 Go Beyond VoC Surveys to Understand Your Customer

Actionable, objective insight

Explore these additional complimentary resources and tools
for customer service and support leaders:

Guide eBook eBook Webinar

The Future of Customer Service
Develop your strategy for building a
value-driven customer service function.
Deliver High-Value Customer
Experiences With the
Connected Rep
Empower customer service reps
to deliver high-value customer
experiences.
Improve Your Customer
Self-Service Portal
Implement 11 foundational capabilities
to improve the customer experience
and deliver self-service success.
Voice of the Customer Webinar
Discover how to transform your VoC
program to obtain more actionable
insight and maximum value.

Download Guide Download eBook Learn More Register Now

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