What Is Voice of the Customer (VoC)?
Voice of the Customer (VoC) refers to capturing and analyzing customer feedback and opinions about a product, service, or brand.
Businesses use this methodology to understand customer needs, preferences, and expectations. This helps them to improve their offerings, prioritize customer-centric initiatives and enhance the customer experience.
What Are Voice of the Customer AI Tools?
Voice of the Customer (VoC) tools are AI tools, software solutions or platforms that help businesses capture, analyze, and act upon customer feedback effectively.
These tools provide features and functionalities to facilitate the VoC process, enabling businesses to gather valuable customer insights and make informed decisions based on that feedback.
VoC tools can range from survey tools that collect customer feedback, and often come with limited analytics capabilities, to social listening tools that monitor online conversations and sentiment around a brand.
They can also include text analytics tools that analyze unstructured feedback, customer feedback management systems for centralized feedback, data collection and limited analysis, voice analytics tools for analyzing recorded customer interactions, and online review monitoring tools for tracking and analyzing customer reviews.
Then there are the more advanced Unified Customer Intelligence platforms. These platforms unify and centralize all unstructured feedback data and customer interactions across reviews, support, and social media. They deliver a unified, single source of customer truth for all teams within an organization.
Unified Customer Intelligence platforms use deep-learning AI to analyze customer feedback data at scale to deliver transformational insights based on everything your customers tell you in their feedback.
These tools are crucial for customer-centric businesses in understanding customer needs, improving the customer experience, determining pricing and driving business success.
Benefits of Using Voice of the Customer Software
Using Voice of the Customer (VoC) software offers several benefits to customer-centric businesses. Here are some of the key advantages:
Customer Insights: VoC software enables businesses to gather direct customer feedback, providing valuable insights into their needs, preferences, and expectations. This helps organizations better understand their target audience and make informed decisions based on customer feedback.
Improved Decision-Making: Businesses can make data-driven decisions by analyzing customer feedback through VoC software. They can identify trends, patterns, and foresee potential issues, allowing them to prioritize areas for improvement and allocate resources effectively.
Enhanced Customer Experience: VoC software helps businesses identify pain points, bottlenecks, and areas of dissatisfaction in the customer journey. With this information, organizations can proactively address and follow-up on customer concerns, make necessary improvements, and deliver a better overall customer experience to minimize churn.
Product and Service Innovation: By understanding the voice of the customer, businesses can uncover unmet needs and identify opportunities for innovation. VoC software allows organizations to identify customer desires, pain points, and suggestions for new features or offerings, which can drive product development and enhance competitiveness.
Customer Satisfaction and Loyalty: When businesses actively listen to customer feedback and act based on this information, it demonstrates that they value their customers' opinions. Organizations can increase customer satisfaction, foster loyalty, and build long-term customer engagement by addressing concerns and improving products or services.
Competitive Advantage: VoC software helps businesses stay ahead of the competition by continuously monitoring and responding to customer feedback. Organizations can differentiate themselves in the market by consistently meeting customer expectations, addressing their needs, and gaining a competitive edge.
Enhanced Productivity: VoC software streamlines customer feedback analysis. The VoC program’s automation saves time and resources compared to manual methods, allowing businesses to analyze feedback at scale and manage it efficiently.
Continuous Improvement: VoC software facilitates ongoing monitoring and analysis of customer feedback, enabling businesses to implement a continuous improvement cycle. Organizations can iteratively enhance their products, services, and processes to meet evolving customer expectations by consistently gathering and acting upon customer insights.
10 Best Voice of the Customer Tools & Software for 2024
So, you're hunting for a tool that rocks and fits your needs like a glove?
Well, fear not! We've scoured through countless tools, doing all the heavy lifting, to bring you a list of the top 10 voice of the customer tools out there right now.
Here’s our rundown of 10 top SaaS products to gather feedback and customer insights.
1. Chattermill
Chattermill is a Unified Customer Intelligence platform that helps you unify customer feedback and extract valuable insights to improve your products, services, and customer experiences.
It uses advanced artificial intelligence, machine learning and natural language processing (NLP) technologies to analyze and understand unstructured customer feedback at scale.
The platform enables you to analyze feedback from multiple channels, including surveys, reviews, social media, and customer support interactions. Chattermill's NLP capabilities allow it to analyze and categorize this feedback at scale, extracting meaningful themes, sentiment, and customer opinions.
The platform also provides real-time analytics and visualizations. You and your teams can access dashboards and reports highlighting key metrics, sentiment trends, and customer feedback patterns. These visualizations help you easily understand and act upon the insights derived from your customer feedback.
Chattermill Features:
- Feedback & Support & Conversation & Social & Integrations
- Advanced analytics
- Sentiment analysis
- Impact analysis
- Advanced segmentation and filtering with metadata
- Custom dashboards and workflows
- Proactive discovery and alerting
Chattermill G2 Score: 4.5
Who It’s For: High-growth Startups, Scaleups, SMEs, Enterprise Brands
Chattermill Pros:
- Unification of data sources and use cases
- Contextually-rich insights that help you prioritize customer issues
- Proactive alerting
- Collaborative transparency (it's easy to collaborate as a team, share insights with all the stakeholders, add new users and teams)
- Intuitive user experience
- Enterprise agility and security
Chattermill Cons
- No data collection capabilities
2. Birdeye
Birdeye is primarily a reputation management platform that helps businesses manage and improve their online presence, customer reviews, and overall customer experience.
It offers tools and features to monitor online reviews, collect customer feedback, and engage with customers.
Birdeye Features:
- Competitive intelligence
- Sentiment analysis
- Customer reports and dashboards
- Customer feedback analysis of online reviews and social media
Birdeye G2 Score: 4.8
Who It’s For: Small, medium, and large businesses
Birdeye Pros:
- Users report positive, responsive customer service
- Connects with many different tools
- Easy-to-use reporting system
Birdeye Cons
- Users report social media analytics lack depth
- Glitchy interface
- Competitive intelligence
3. Medallia
Medallia is a long-established customer experience management platform that empowers businesses to understand and enhance customer interactions.
It offers a comprehensive suite of tools and services designed to capture, analyze, and act upon customer feedback.
Medallia Features:
- Create segments to group similar customers together
- Stay on top of real-time reporting and analytics
- Get push notifications for updates
- Integrates with most third-party tools
Medallia G2 Score: 4.4
Who It’s For: Enterprise brands or medium-sized companies with big budgets
Medallia Pros:
- It’s an all-in-one solution, which might be beneficial for some
- Data collection capabilities included
- Recognizable name
- Tracks customer complaints
Medallia Cons
- It’s expensive for most companies
- Limited AI capabilities
- Lots to learn - complex tool, not that intuitive
- Rule-based approach to text analysis
- They struggle to unify your metadata from different data sources
4. Qualtrics
Qualtrics is a well-established experience management platform that enables organizations to collect, analyze, and act upon valuable insights from customers, employees, products, and brands.
Qualtrics provides tools and solutions to gather feedback through surveys, polls, and other channels. It enables businesses to capture real-time data and feedback across various touchpoints, allowing them to understand customer needs, preferences, and sentiments.
Qualtrics Features:
- Customizable pre-set NPS (net promoter score) and CSAT (customer satisfaction) surveys
- Analytics for NPS, CSAT, and CES (customer effort score)
- Multilanguage support
- Custom reports and dashboards
Qualtrics G2 Score: 4.4
Who It’s For: Small, medium, and large businesses
Qualtrics Pros:
- It’s an all-in-one solution, which might be beneficial for some
- Recognized for its data collection capabilities - it’s a really good survey tool
- Recognizable name
- Solid reporting features
Qualtrics Cons
- Its UI is quite tricky to get your head around
- Complicated and resource-heavy
- Users report limited customer support
- It’s often more expensive than some of the tools listed here
- Rule-based approach to text analysis
- You can’t compare more than one data source per dashboard
5. AskNicely
AskNicely is a customer experience and feedback management platform that helps businesses collect and leverage customer feedback to drive improvements and enhance overall satisfaction.
At its core, AskNicely is about creating and distributing customer satisfaction surveys via SMS, email, or web. These surveys are designed to gauge customer sentiment and measure satisfaction levels across different interactions and touchpoints.
AskNicely Features:
- Feedback collection and analytics for NPS, CSAT, and CES
- Multilanguage support
- Customer segmentation
- Template library for CX surveys
AskNicely G2 Score: 4.7
Who It’s For: Small to mid-sized businesses
AskNicely Pros:
- Pre-designed survey templates for NPS, CSAT, and CES
- It helps you track NPS trends over time
- Automated workflows
AskNicely Cons
- Limited analytics capabilities
- It’s predominantly a survey tool rather than a true VOC tool
- The UI can be overwhelming
6. InMoment
InMoment is a provider of voice-of-the-customer tools, empowering businesses to gather valuable insights from their customers.
InMoment's platform offers advanced analytics and reporting capabilities to extract actionable insights and identify trends, enabling businesses to make data-driven decisions and improve customer experiences. With a focus on customer-centricity, InMoment helps companies drive loyalty and retention, enhance brand reputation, and achieve business growth by listening to and understanding their customers' voices.
InMoment Features:
- Analytics for NPS, CSAT, and CES
- Multilanguage support
- Send custom automated surveys
- Send text message surveys
InMoment G2 Score: 4.7
Who It’s For: Medium-sized and Enterprise brands
InMoment Pros:
- Real-time alerts
- Helps with putting together customer journey maps
- All-in-one reporting
InMoment Cons
- It’s difficult to customize dashboards
- Limited customer support
- It can be expensive for those on a budget
7. GetFeedback
GetFeedback is a customer experience and online survey platform that enables businesses to gather valuable customer feedback.
It provides tools and features to create, distribute, and analyze surveys for market research to gain insights and improve customer satisfaction.
GetFeedback Features:
- Free customizable survey templates
- Omnichannel survey distribution
- User, role, and access management
- Customer reports and dashboards
GetFeedback G2 Score: 4.5
Who It’s For: Medium-sized and Enterprise brands
GetFeedback Pros:
- Ready-made NPS and CSAT survey templates
- Surveys are customizable
- It integrates with most of the tools you’re likely to use
GetFeedback Cons
- Limited analytics capabilities
- It’s predominantly a survey tool rather than a true VOC tool
- Users report some integrations can be expensive
8. Qualaroo
Qualaroo is a customer feedback and user research platform that helps businesses gather insights and understand their website visitors' and customers' needs, preferences, and behavior.
It provides tools for collecting qualitative and quantitative feedback through surveys and tracking user behavior.
Qualaroo Features:
- Customizable templates and surveys for NPS, CSAT, and CES
- Allows you to create surveys in multiple languages and formats
- Integrates with many of the tools you’re likely to use
Qualaroo G2 Score: 4.4
Who It’s For: Medium to large-sized companies
Qualaroo Pros:
- Automatically converts survey text to multiple languages
- Nudge surveys can be effective in gathering on-site feedback
- Sentiment analysis powered by IBM Watson
Qualaroo Cons
- Limited reporting functionality
- It can be expensive for smaller companies
- Lacking advanced analytics
9. Sentisum
Sentisum is a customer platform that utilizes artificial intelligence and natural language processing to analyze and understand customer feedback from various sources such as customer support, reviews, and surveys.
While some of the platforms in this list focus on survey and feedback analysis, SentiSum specializes in tagging and sentiment analysis of customer support conversations.
Sentisum Features:
- Real-time customer support data analysis
- Customer sentiment analysis
- Customized views and advanced filters
- Automated ticket tagging
Sentisum G2 Score: 4.8
Who It’s For: Small, medium, and large-sized companies
SentisumPros:
- Users report positive experiences with Sentisum’s customer support team
- Intuitive and easy to navigate
- Able to analyze customer support interactions at scale
Sentisum Cons
- Requires manual input - AI isn’t always 100% accurate
- Their use case is primarily for customer support teams
10. NICE Satmetrix
NICE Satmetrix is a customer experience management (CEM) platform that helps businesses measure, analyze, and improve customer satisfaction and loyalty with the aim of customer success.
The customer program offers a comprehensive suite of tools and features to capture feedback, analyze customer sentiment, and drive actionable insights.
NICE Satmetrix Features:
- Basic AI-based sentiment analysis
- Automated agent workflows
- Text and speech analytics
NICE Satmetrix G2 Score: 4.3
Who It’s For: Medium and large-sized businesses
NICE Satmetrix Pros:
- Users report positive customer support relationships
- Solid analytics capabilities
- You can publish positive interactions on social media
NICE Satmetrix Cons
- Limited integrations
- Users report the platform can be buggy and difficult to figure out
- Not all insights are real-time
Choosing the Right Voice of the Customer Tools
When choosing the right Voice of the Customer (VoC) tool for your business, consider the following factors:
Objectives and Use Cases: Clearly define your goals and use cases for implementing a VoC tool. Determine the specific insights you want to gather, such as customer satisfaction, product feedback, or customer journey analysis. This clarity will help you choose a tool that aligns with your goals.
Feedback Channels: Assess the feedback channels most relevant to your business. Determine whether you need a tool that supports customer surveys, social media monitoring, text analytics, online review tracking, or a combination. Select a tool that allows you to analyze all of these channels.
Scalability and Flexibility: Consider your organization's size and the tool's scalability. Ensure that the tool can handle your expected volume of feedback and grow with your business. Additionally, check if the tool offers customization options to adapt to your requirements. For example, do you need just website or in-app voice of customer feedback too?
Integration Capabilities: Evaluate the tool's integration capabilities with your existing systems and data sources. Consider whether it can integrate with your customer relationship management (CRM) system, help desk software, or other relevant platforms. Seamless integration can streamline your workflow and enable better data analysis.
Analytics and Reporting: Examine the tool's analytics and reporting capabilities. Look for features such as sentiment analysis, text categorization, trend identification, and visualizations. Also, look for a tool that helps you compare data and understand the impact on key metrics such as NPS. These features will help you derive actionable insights from customer feedback.
Ease of Use: Consider the user-friendliness of the tool. Look for an intuitive interface and a straightforward setup process. The tool should be easy to navigate, allowing you and your team to efficiently use and interpret its insights.
Customer Support and Training: Assess the customer support and training level provided by the tool's vendor. Look for resources like documentation, tutorials, and a responsive support and professional services team to assist you in case of any issues or questions.
User Reviews and Reputation: Research user reviews and feedback on the shortlisted VoC tools. Consider the reputation and track record of the tool's vendor in the industry. Assessing the experiences of other users can provide insights into the tool's reliability and effectiveness.
Approach to Text Analytics: The approach a tool takes to text analytics influences the quality of insights that you’re able to glean from your VoC data. Look for a tool that employs an aspect-based sentiment analysis approach rather than a more simple, fixed rule-based approach.
Security and Compliance: Whether you’re a scaleup or an established enterprise brand, you want to ensure that the tool you go for is ready for the future. Look for a tool that has enterprise-ready security and compliance as standard.
By considering these factors together, you can select a VoC tool that best suits your business needs, enables effective feedback management, and helps you gain valuable customer insights to improve the overall customer experience.
Get Started with Chattermill
Want to learn more about how a Voice of the Customer tool can help your business?
Book a demo with one of our team, and we’ll show you what Chattermill’s Unified Customer Intelligence platform can do for you!
We show you how to drive action with your VoC program
