VoC Strategy and Roadmap Spotlight a Clear Path to Years of CX Enhancements

Overview

A large Canadian customs broker asked Andrew Reise to help deliver customer experiences (CX) that would drive long-term growth. But despite setting a customer-first culture as one of its strategic pillars, it was struggling to turn that CX vision into results.

We analyzed both its employee and customer experiences to highlight the holes in its service units. Then we dove deep into customer experiences across all of its interactions to understand customer needs, challenges, and expectations. From there, we designed a full voice of customer (VoC) strategy and a roadmap that’s poised to elevate its customer experiences for years into the future.

Business Challenge

Customer expectations are higher than ever. But market conditions are making it difficult for many businesses to meet—let alone exceed—those expectations. For one, employee engagement is dropping to dismal levels, and that’s impacting the front-line service workforce. At the same time, if employees don’t have a shared understanding of their customers’ needs along with a clear action plan, it’s easy for them to operate in silos. That all leads to fragmented messaging, lackluster experiences, and a failure to deliver on brand promises.

Our client wanted to build a customer-centered culture, but it's employees lacked the strategy and vision to deliver outstanding CX. In addition to facing a shortage of front-line service employees, the client didn’t fully understand its customers’ needs, pain points, or expectations. It also lacked CX metrics and an incentive structure to inspire employees to deliver better experiences.

We conducted in-depth research to understand the VoC, employee perspectives, and current customer feedback processes. From there, we detailed our client’s personas and mapped out full customer journeys. Our team then used that analysis to identify gaps in customer experiences and hosted training workshops to unify employees around a clear CX action plan. Ultimately, we developed a full VoC initiative roadmap to help the client’s teams create consistent, outstanding experiences—and deliver on its brand’s promises.

Establishing North Star Metrics

Our team started by working with our client’s leaders to identify north star and cascading metrics. These measurements used a combination of customer, operational, and financial data to analyze the customer’s journeys. By nailing down guiding metrics, we laid a foundation to help unify efforts, motivate teams, and prove ROI.

Understanding the VoC

We conducted in-depth interviews with customers to shine light on their experiences across all touchpoints. That effort illuminated the full customer’s journey, from onboarding through border releases for shipments and freight forwarding services.

Our team also created inside-out perspectives for pain points and identified high-ROI opportunities to improve current customers’ experiences. Then we packaged all of that data in a full VoC breakdown that highlighted customer needs, friction points, and opportunities across every interaction with the brand.

Creating a Customer Service Delivery Playbook

After pinpointing customer needs and opportunities, we conducted interviews and ran workshops with internal stakeholders. In these sessions, we listened to employees’ experiences with customers, identified maturity gaps, and formulated a picture of their ideal future state. This all helped align the organization and establish a long-term vision.

Launching Technology to Rally Employees Around CX

To help our client quickly identify customer pain points, enhance experiences, and measure results, we set up Medallia’s enterprise VoC platform. Within the platform, we also designed a VoC survey strategy to fill CX gaps across all lines of the business.

Preparing Employees with a CX Action Plan

After conducting a focus group with employees to understand customer opportunities and concerns even more, we mapped out a full roadmap and CX action plan. We assigned values to each solution to help our client prioritize its strategies. Then we identified unmet needs and highlighted quick wins to increase retention and drive growth.

Closing the Feedback Loop to Push Along Ongoing Progress

To help our client continuously identify customer needs and improve CX, we designed surveys and closed-loop processes within Medallia’s feedback management platform. This ensures that as customer needs change, our client’s brokerage line will be ready to identify, meet, and exceed customer expectations right away.