Voice of Customer Tools
If you're interested in starting some Voice of Customer research - here are some tools I think you should take a look at.
4Q iPerceptions
This a great free tool develop by Avinash Kausick and iPerceptions. It can be implemented in minutes, you can upload your company logo and 4Q provides now offer a comprehensive list of questions on "purpose of visit" but is not going to be configurable for all sites. A great way to start particulary as 4Q now offers advanced segmentation around frequency of visit and how the visitor arrived at the site. Get more information on 4Q here.
iPerceptions Satisfactiion Index
The iPSI surveys cohorts of visitors to your site using a multi-dimensional questionnaire to investigate satisfaction with site Navigation, Content, Brand Recognition/Trust and Referral Rating and gives you actionable insights into the performance of your site which you can benchmark against similar sites in your sector. More information on iPSI here
Opinionlab
Opinionlabs tool allows you to serve different questionnaires to different site visitors according to behaviours. Through integration with market leading web analytics solutions Opinionlab enables you to target users who depart your shopping cart with one set of questions while visitors who fail to complete a registration form can be given with another. This gives you the ability to delve deeper into the reasons underlying visitor behaviour. More information on Opinionlab Voice of Customer here
The American Consumer Satisfaction Index
If you are generally interested in listening to the voice of your customers then I recommend reading a book called "The Satisfied Customer Winners and Losers in the Battle for Buyer Preference" by Claes Fornell. This book is a fascinating insight into the history of the American Consumer Satisfaction Index and its effectiveness in forecasting organisational performance. For more information on the use of the ACSI online speak to the people at Foresee Results
The Net Promotor Score
The Net Promoter Score or NPS allows companies to track promoters and detractors. Visitors to a site are asked one simply question “Would you recommend us to a friend or colleague? Respondents are asked to score their likelihood to recommend your site based on a 0 to 10 point rating scale. With zero representing the extreme negative and ten representing the extreme positive end.
Promoters (those who answer 9 or 10) are return customers who keep buying from your company and encourage their friends to do the same. Passives (those who answer 7 or 8) are satisfied but unenthusiastic customers who might migrate to a competitor. Detractors (those who answer 0 through 6) are dissatisfied customers likely to denigrate you company.
To calculate your company's NPS, take the percentage of customers who are promoters, and subtract the percentage who are detractors
Take a look at the winners and sinners on the Net Promoter site which shows a huge variation with-in the same industry sectors. Also check out the Net Promoter Community Forum
Reading List
The Satisfied Customer: Winners and Losers in the Battle for Buyer Preference by Claes Fornell
The Ultimate Question by Fred Reichheld