Employee Engagement is an Important, But Often Overlooked, Aspect of VoC

One of the basic tenets of business is that happy customers result in improved business and revenue. This becomes even more true in today's connected world where good — or bad — experiences can be easily shared on social networks from anywhere in the world.

However, businesses have an equally advanced way of addressing this with Voice of the Customer (VoC), a process that aims to address customer expectations, preferences and aversions. In fact, according to a recent blog post from NICE Systems, a provider of workforce optimization solutions, the link between VoC and bottom-line revenue is pretty hard to dispute, based on the data available.

The post goes on to add that customer retention is positively impacted by VoC, helping to maintain a customer base to even create brand loyalty over time. Improved operational efficiency and reduced spending on legacy market research initiatives are also named as common sources of VoC ROI (return on investment).

However, many companies overlook employee engagement as a factor in VoC. Indeed, a successful VoC program can have a profound positive effect on the way many customer-facing employees behave and contribute to a company. In order to nurture this, it's important, especially early on in a VoC initiative, to avoid using it negatively against employees, hindering their excitement.

For example, it's common to see companies use their VoC results as negative reinforcement against employees. However, most of the NICE Fizzback client base actually received mostly (70 percent - 80 percent) positive customer feedback, with a large part of that being employee-centric. As such, there is usually a large base of motivational material available to use much that is much more effective than the negative.

This can lead to a "mutually reinforcing relationship," according to NICE. Indeed, engaged employees are far more productive and more profitable, while offering greater customer loyalty than disengaged employees.

Meanwhile, in a recent interview with Matthew Storm, director of innovation and solutions at NICE Systems (News - Alert), TMCnet Web Editor Rachel Ramsey discovered that a properly optimized workforce can even help protect against call center fraud.