I recently had the opportunity to participate with Bruce Temkin of Temkin Group and Lara Wise of tw telecom in a webinar on using customer feedback to fuel business growth. The key takeaway of the session was that voice of the customer programs are not just about listening; the real value comes when organizations democratize their data and drive action throughout their organization. From operational closed-loop processes that enable service recovery, to strategic closed-loop processes that address systemic issues, organizations must build the right information, workflow and accountability to address the issues impacting the customer experience. These actions improve the customer experience, increase loyalty, and drive growth.

Here’s a post-session perspective from Bruce.

I recently participated in a webinar for Satmetrix with Deborah Eastman who runs the business consulting group at Satmetrix and Lara Wise who is Vice President of Customer Experience at tw telecom.

My portion of the presentation dealt with the evolution of voice of the customer (VoC) programs. Most companies with a VoC program get value from their efforts, but my analysis shows that almost all of them are in early stages of development.

Think about how much value companies will get when their programs mature. In a report I recently published called “Assessing Your Voice of the Customer Maturity,” I found that only 5% of VoC programs have reached the ultimate level of maturity; a phase that I call “Transformers.” Transformers link customer insight data into most of the processes throughout the company, from operational activities to strategic decision making.

I also looked at the difference in VoC programs between customer experience leaders and customer experience laggards. It turns out that customer experience leaders are considerably more likely to do four VoC activities:

• Use text mining
• Track the impact of corrective actions
• Provide customer feedback widely across the organization
• Provide customized views of the results for different organizations

The webinar flowed well, I thought, because Deborah and Lara had really complementary content. Deborah discussed the Satmetrix approach to helping companies build VoC programs. She shared a few screen shots of their customer experience management application called Satmetrix Xperience, which helps companies identify performance gaps, identify root causes of problems, evaluate performance in different customer segments, and even analyze the drivers of loyalty. Satmetrix uses customer feedback to help its clients respond to immediate customer feedback as well as focus their efforts on the most important areas of improvement.

The highlight of the webinar, though, was Lara’s presentation. There’s nothing better than a good case study. A little background: tw telecom is a leading provider of voice, Internet, and data networking for businesses in the U.S. More than 2/3 of its 2,900 employees are dedicated to customer service. That’s quite a commitment to service!

Lara discussed how the company’s “commitment to customer experience excellence” is based on three components:

• Passionate people
• Personalized service interactions
• Voice of the customer

I was impressed at how tw telecom uses VoC across its business and actively engages employees in the process. The company recognizes that it needs to build and maintain a customer-centric culture; not just build out a VoC program. And it seems to be working; tw telecom’s Net Promoter Score has increased by 65% since 2008. You can read more about tw telecom’s program in a case study from Satmetrix.

If you didn’t join us on the live broadcast, then it might be valuable to check out the recorded version on the Satmetrix site.