In the current landscape, customers are increasingly prioritizing a superior customer experience over product pricing when selecting a fuel convenience store or gas station. Acknowledging and addressing customer preferences has become crucial. Customers rightfully demand to be heard, prompting leading fuel companies and industry competitors to actively engage in dynamic and robust Voice of Customer (VoC) research. The VoC survey empowers your fuel brand and convenience store to take the lead by extracting valuable insights from customer feedback, gaining a precise understanding of their needs. By carefully analysing these insights and implementing actions based on existing data, you can continuously enhance your services and products. The voice of customer feedback serves as a valuable resource, offering comprehensive information directly from the most reliable source—your customers.
Achieving customer satisfaction is the paramount objective for a fuel convenience store, necessitating the implementation of a robust customer experience strategy. The indispensable element of this strategy involves leveraging Voice of the Customer (VoC) feedback, where customers provide valuable insights. By actively addressing and rectifying concerns raised through this feedback, you send clear signals to the customers that their opinions are not only heard but also acted upon. This cultivates a sense of value and understanding, making customers feel like integral contributors to the decision-making process. Consequently, they are more inclined to become advocates for your brand, expressing their positive experiences through referrals, reviews, and vocal endorsements, thereby elevating your company's reputation, and fostering increased customer advocacy.
While fuel companies routinely collect feedback, the challenge lies in transforming it into actionable insights. This issue is not attributable to employee negligence but rather the absence of a robust fuel brand process or operation capable of conducting the meticulous analysis necessary.
In this article, we guide you on effectively gathering and analysing your Voice of Customer (VoC) feedback, emphasizing the importance of organizing and categorizing it systematically.
Additionally, we delve into strategies for translating this feedback into concrete actions, highlighting the significance of valuing these invaluable pieces of information openly provided by your customers.
Receiving a Voice of the Customer feedback
The decision-maker may not necessarily be the end-user of the products or services your company offers. As a result, they may lack an in-depth understanding of the product, having not used it extensively, making them susceptible to erroneous decisions despite their justified position within your fuel company. While this assertion may present challenges, it underscores the need to navigate this reality effectively. Conventional activities such as routine meetings, conferences, seminars, or product reviews held on a quarterly or daily basis may lack substantial credibility or utility in this context. To make informed decisions, it becomes imperative to tap into customer-driven feedback and insights specific to the fuel store industry. The Voice of Customer (VoC) feedback in the fuel industry scrutinizes every facet, from surveys and complaints to tickets and questions during sales pitches within the organization. By encompassing this comprehensive approach, it not only brings every department to a common standard but also identifies and rectifies discrepancies existing within the organization.
What to capture in a voice of Customer feedback
In the fuel industry, Voice of Customer (VoC) feedback extends its scrutiny to different departments, including the sales team, support team, on-ground team, success team, implementation team, and marketing team. The data gathered from each department plays a crucial role in understanding and enhancing the entire fuel store customer journey. Tailoring the approach based on the teams accessed during the customer journey, the VoC survey generates customizable data by examining both positive and negative feedback across various silos. Key insights derived from this comprehensive analysis include:
- Unhinged customer comments and sentiments
- Training concerns or queries
- Ticket feedback
- Social media posts
- Social media reviews
- Churned-out accounts analysis
- Repeated customer stories
- Reasons for lost sales
- Net Promoter Scores
- Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) survey ratings
This thorough examination not only captures a nuanced understanding of customer experiences but also provides valuable inputs for strategic improvements and informed decision-making at every stage of the fuel industry's customer interaction.
As previously discussed in one of our earlier blog posts, there exist two distinct types of feedback and Voice of Customer (VoC) feedback surveys: solicited feedback, also known as structured feedback, and unsolicited feedback, referred to as unstructured feedback. Solicited feedback is specifically targeted towards areas where your company intends to conduct research, focusing on patterns of usage, customer sentiments arising from direct interactions, and product or service specifications. This data is systematically gathered through methods such as Net Promoter Scores (NPS), Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) surveys, company questionnaires, and customer meetings, creating a structured process to openly discuss and address the company's needs with the customer.
Conversely, unsolicited feedback in fuel retail stores, or unstructured feedback, encompasses the unrestrained requests and tickets initiated by customers. This form of feedback manifests in numerous ways, including online platforms like social media channels, as well as complaints raised on-site or directed to the manager. These unfiltered and spontaneous expressions provide valuable insights into customer experiences and concerns, offering a dynamic perspective that complements the structured approach of solicited feedback.
As a fuel retail store, consistently engaging with these forums is paramount to gather invaluable data that might otherwise be overlooked. This form of feedback, while not always solicited, is undeniably offered, representing a crucial dimension that may not directly influence company processes or fuel retail store operations. Nonetheless, it stands out as one of the most essential feedback forms, with the potential to significantly propel you toward your goals and targets. Addressing unsolicited feedback can prove instrumental in enhancing customer experience, refining products, and elevating service standards. Although collecting unsolicited feedback poses challenges, training fuel industry employees to adeptly navigate these sources can yield positive outcomes, fostering a beneficial impact on your fuel business.
While the temptation to ignore negative feedback and solely concentrate on positive input may be alluring, it is crucial not to succumb to this approach. Lessons from successful fuel retail stores underscore the potential pitfalls of such a strategy, emphasizing the importance of attentiveness to both positive and negative feedback. Listening to your customer needs and actively seeking their feedback serves as a cornerstone for product and service enhancement, fostering a brand reputation that stands unparalleled in the competitive landscape of the fuel industry. Acknowledging and addressing negative feedback not only leads to continuous improvement but also contributes significantly to building a resilient and esteemed brand presence.
VOC feedback training
Navigating the intricacies of your customer experience in the fuel industry can pose a challenge. Hence, it is essential to train your employees to discern subtle cues within customer feedback. They should be proficient in identifying statements like "I did not know it works like that" or "this is not what I asked for" as valuable feedback, reporting them for necessary improvements. Despite the significance of these smaller issues, they often escape attention in larger meetings and conferences. Prioritizing the discussion and swift resolution of these concerns is crucial to ensuring ongoing refinement of your customer experience within the fuel industry.
What to do with a Voice of the Customer feedback
To ensure a seamless buyer journey and effective customer experience management in your fuel brand and c-store, it is imperative to establish a dedicated customer experience team or designate an employee for customer journey mapping. This ensures that all feedback and insights are meticulously analysed and promptly acted upon. Neglecting swift action on voice of customer fuel store feedback runs the risk of losing the customer's voice altogether, potentially excluding them from the decision-making process. Such disengagement can be detrimental to the growth of your fuel store. Notably, 81% of customers are more inclined to provide feedback when they anticipate tangible benefits. Acknowledging that implementing changes may take time due to various stakeholders involved, it is crucial to avoid vague responses such as "we are accessing your feedback," which can induce impatience in customers. A more proactive approach involves expressing gratitude, promptly reporting, analysing, and actively working on the received feedback. Providing customers with context and setting expectations when responding to Voice of Customer (VoC) feedback creates a sense of being heard and assures them that their input will lead to concrete actions.
Every fuel company must establish a robust Voice of the Customer (VoC) feedback program, as it serves as a pivotal element in distinguishing your brand within the competitive landscape of the fuel and convenience store industry. Elevating customer experience is the key to standing out among fuel and c-store competitors. The process of collecting insights and customer feedback has become increasingly streamlined, with leading customer experience companies like Sonata CX playing a transformative role in fuel brands' customer experience strategies.
Companies such as Sonata CX are at the forefront of driving positive change in the fuel industry. Through our real-time reporting platform, we facilitate the seamless reporting of issues, empowering you to make informed decisions and implement impactful changes in your fuel brand. Additionally, we specialize in creating customizable Voice of Customer surveys tailored to the unique demands of the fuel industry. Our dedicated efforts are geared towards helping your fuel retail store and convenience store reach unprecedented heights, fostering customer success, retention, and satisfaction. With a keen understanding of the challenges inherent in the fuel industry, Sonata CX strives to position your brand as a leader amidst competitors.
Our CX solutions are designed to transform the total customer experience through comprehensive surveys, metrics, analytics, and auditing, utilizing the CXM framework. By combining physical measurements with digital Platformation™ capabilities, we create a customer experience strategy that gives you a competitive edge.
Sonata CX is a global technology company specializing in customer experience (CX) measurement and platform-based digital transformation. We help businesses become connected, open, intelligent, and scalable. With a presence in over 105 markets and more than 27 years of market leadership, we offer extensive measurement capabilities and powerful, intuitive reporting and analytics platforms to enhance customer experience. Our reach spans the USA, Canada, EMEA, and APAC regions. To learn more about how we can assist you, please click here or fill out the business enquiry form below.