With an MBA from Yale, an MS in Financial Engineering from Claremont and a BTech in Electrical Engineering from Punjab Engineering College – CEO, Sumit Aneja, brings a lot to the Voxco virtual table.
A customer-first, data-driven organization, Voxco works to squeeze all of the juice out of data and insights so governments, communities and businesses can listen, improve and impact their customer’s experiences. Needless to say, 2020 presented and an unprecedented shift to consumer data – allowing Voxco to really put their platform to work.
M.R. Rangaswami: What complexities has the pandemic introduced to businesses working to maintain positive customer experiences?
Sumit Aneja: The pandemic has forced so much of our daily business interactions online, putting an even greater physical distance between organizations and their customers. In turn, this has made it more difficult to monitor the customer experience.
For retailers, it’s come down to satisfying the customer on the “last mile” in particular. Everyone jumping from in-person to online shopping has accelerated the move to ecommerce by three to five years. We saw some of the kinks with that acceleration during the early days of the pandemic especially, as well as during the holidays when many modes of home delivery were overwhelmed by the sheer volume. Buyers these days are depending on digital shopping for more things out of necessity, and they’re wanting products faster than they used to.
Brands need to continuously monitor the customer experience, from the point of shopping and purchasing all the way down to that critical last mile.
M.R. How can Voxco be used to open a dialog with customers and support businesses to build client loyalty?
Sumit: Conducting frequent but brief surveys that capture feedback about the customer experience not only helps to identify common problems but also makes customers feel valued and listened to. Brands that understand this ask for feedback throughout the customer journey, with data captured at every touchpoint.
“How was your shopping experience?”
“Was the product as expected?”
“Would you like to leave a review?”
Loyalty is built by pointing customers to these open channels for dialog and surveying them often.
M.R.: From a technology perspective, what advantages do organizations gain when they implement a customer survey program into their operations?
Sumit: Winning brands are those that monitor their data continuously and meet consumers “wherever” they are to better understand and improve their experience. For this reason, the ability to capture feedback via multiple channels—directly on the website, mobile, email, phone, in-person—is something organizations should look for when implementing a survey platform. Having multiple feedback options certainly increases the probability of customer participation and opening those important dialogs.
Further, the ability to set up real-time alerts and escalations if a survey response “scores” below a certain threshold can help businesses detect and respond to problems immediately before the customer relationship deteriorates.
I feel it is important that surveys should also be easily customizable by people within an organization who do not have an IT background. When this customization becomes manageable, it can quickly capture the exact data an organization wants – making the findings more impactful for both the business and their customers.
M.R. Rangaswami is the Co-Founder of Sandhill.com