Comments on Gartner's VoC Thinking

  

Gartner recently published a research report (# G00201380 if you're interested) outlining their CRM team's thoughts on the importance of VoC initiatives to the various constituencies that make up the CRM universe (Sales, Marketing and Customer Service). After reading the report I thought I'd share a couple of comments.

Of Gartner's 5 "Key Findings", two stand out as being closely related to "closed-loop" feedback processes:

• "Over 90% of organizations fail to get back to the customer after a customer service survey".
• "Failure to act on the customer's voice defeats the point of listening".

Of Gartner's recommendations one seems particularly relevant to these two key findings: 

• "Create a mechanism for the timely distribution, tracking and action of relevant insights from aggregated VoC data to each stakeholder in the organization, from the frontline customer agent to the CEO".

In my opinion, A "mechaninsm for timely distribution, tracking and action of insights" is a Feedback Management System.  Gartner implies that you have to create your feedback management system.  Or, have one custom built by an integrator / consultant.  However, and fortunately, there are a number of commercially available feedback management platforms that are relatively easy to set up and implement with internal resources and minimal vendor assistance.