From the course: Customer Service: How to Adapt to Changing Customer Needs

Define the different voices of your customer

From the course: Customer Service: How to Adapt to Changing Customer Needs

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Define the different voices of your customer

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- When your customers speak, do you listen? And do you listen even when they don't speak? When you want to adapt your customer support strategy to changing customer needs, you need to recognize what those needs are, and that requires listening to your customers when they speak to you. But this isn't as clear-cut as it sounds. There's a lot of talk these days about the voice of the customer, but it's really voices of the customer, because your customers speak to you in different ways. Sometimes customers provide you feedback directly by talking to you, and other times you can infer what customers think and feel by how they behave. To get a full view of how your customers feel, you need to identify where these different voices are. Otherwise, you may create a narrow impression of only what certain customers want. Not only do you have to understand that customers have different voices, but there are also different types of customers across all those voices. Maybe you're a company with some customers who are young, urban professionals in the tech world, and some customers who work in manufacturing. Chances are one of those groups will be more likely to express themselves by picking up the phone and talking to a human being while the other is more likely to leave a comment on Snapchat. Now, let's consider some of the ways customers speak to you. One of the most common ways to listen to your customers is by sending them a survey, but that's not all. If you're a B2B company, maybe you engage with customers over focus groups or regular meetings of a customer council. Another common way customers speak to you is when they call, email, or chat with customer support. When they reach out in direct ways, you need to determine why're they calling? What are their problems? My favorite method is to survey your customers' support agents as proxy voices of the customer, because they may understand customers better than the customers understand themselves. Lastly, analyze customer behavior. If a customer is likely to cancel their account after a certain experience you provide them, that's the customer's way of telling you that experience doesn't quite jive with their expectations. Now, consider the various ways your different customers speak to you. Pick three and commit to double down on how well you're listening. Listening will help you adapt to your dynamic customer base.

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