Who is the owner of the VOC?

Nandkishor Tripathi

Hello team

I have been interviewing Head of CSM and CXO and have got mixed answers about the ownership of a VOC Program.

In B2B SaaS who own's VOC program? (Who has their KPIs based on this?)

Who initiate and define the needs of VOC?

In my journey smaller companies has CSM who takes responsibility of customer experience and when it gets maturity then CX as a department is initiated.

Is decision maker for VOC in small B2B SaaS is Head of CSM or there is CX team involved? 

Would like to hear and learn about how your organization focuses and structures as CSM team and / or Customer Experience team.

@Jay Nathan @Jeff Breunsbach @Anita Toth @Will Pagden Adding you all to get some help from the gurus!

 

Will Pagden

Hey @Nandkishor Tripathi, this is a real tough one to answer and purely depends on your business. Currently I am in a start-up with 20 people and ARR of just over $1.5m. 

We have no plans to expand the team to have a CX team as its just not cost effective currently. So it sits on my head (or it will once I've rolled it out!).

I think the thing I would advocate time and time again is to make sure you involve product in this process. Voice of Customer is so important for the evolution of the product so its key to involve them throughout.

Just my opinion, but in a smaller B2B it generally sits within the CS team remit.

Nandkishor Tripathi

Hi @Will Pagden Thank you sharing details.

In small B2B SaaS does a CSM holds budget for VOC program or this is driven by executives? 

Will Pagden

Good question @Nandkishor Tripathi, it will depend on the make up of the company. So right now I am Head of CS but also sit on the executive management team. We have a lot of funds behind us so budgets aren't really defined as such yet, we do it on a need basis, so if your business case is strong enough you can have it. Budgets are coming though.

Mike Gospe

Hi Nandkishor,

This is a very good question and their is a lot of confusion. As a B2B strategic marketer for 30 years and an architect of VOC initiatives, I've discovered a set of "truths". I've written about VOC best practices in my book, The Marketing High Ground, and the associated blog. Here's the quick answer to your question:

1) VOC must be viewed as a cross-functional initiative, not a program or project owned by a single department. When this happens, VOC becomes fragmented. Turf wars and silo'd thinking emerge. The company never gets a full 360 benefit of what is learned. Instead, there is a lot of internal bickering.

2) For any VOC program to have long lasting meaning, it must be driven from the top. That means the CMO or Head of marketing must own the program. It also means that the CEO must be open to receiving and listening to customer input, feedback, and advice. While the day-to-day activities of the VOC mechanics will likely be owned by demand gen or customer success or customer experience managers, the buck stops with highest ranking marketing executive. 

3) Here's one version of a VOC model. Of course, the model is tailored for any specific company. While building the model, it is very important to define the specific objectives for the VOC initiative, identify all the key stakeholders, and establish clear rules of engagements and who owns specific KPIs. Bottom line: it's a team sport.

My team at KickStart Alliance coach and guide companies to build/apply VOC models. We also have expertise in customer onboarding, customer insight, win/loss analysis, and customer advisory boards.  Happy to chat with you via a Zoom call if you would like to discuss the model in more detail.

Hope this is helpful.

MIke Gospe
[email protected]

Anita Toth

I was hoping you'd post this here too @Mike Gospe

Anita Toth

@Nandkishor Tripathi  Thanks for tagging me in this. I'm just learning more about this myself and who should own it. Glad to see @Mike Gospe responded. I see he has CMO as the owner of VoC. 

gurd3v

Everything Mike said...

The biggest question I've been trying to solve for is how to compile data from all the different mediums that exist (Support, IM, Surveys etc.) into a system that can feed data in a meaningful way.

Anna Alley

I find it interesting that you have the CMO as the owner of VOC. Traditionally, I think of the owner of VOC being the Chief Customer Officer (or a similar position) rather than marketing. Obviously, you have to have close partnership with Marketing and Product Marketing teams, but to me the better "owner" of VOC is the leader of the teams that are interacting with existing customers on a daily basis (Onboarding, Success, Care, etc.). We have a subset that sits within my organization that's specifically responsible for collecting and consolidating VOC feedback from existing customers, and then partners with Marketing, Customer Research, and other departments in providing the holistic view to the business. There's definitely a lot still in progress as this is a new muscle for our organization. We're discussing ideas around a Customer Experience stakeholder group and other ideas to ensure we establish a robust, centralized program. Love the discussion!

Russell Bourne

I'll echo those who have said VoC data is a cross-functional responsibility.  The details will depend on where your company is in its own growth.

Marketing plays a huge role because they will likely be the ones managing the campaign: designing the questions, deciding when to blast and follow up, etc.  They will also likely mine the happy responses for testimonials, case studies, and anything else that can end up on collateral.

If your company has already created specializations where technical Implementation and Support teams exist and CSMs are business relationship owners, I like the idea of segmenting VoC along with it.  Meaning, Support engages with customer technical users, and can collect VoC from their point of view.  Your CSMs should focus most of their relationship energy on business outcome contacts (non-technical users) who will have a different view. 

Both groups and their views are important, and VoC can be collected by Support as well as CSMs.  You might find customers who rave about the technology but whose business stakeholders aren't seeing the value.  That would be a great time to help break down silos in your customer's organization, positioning yourself as a thought leader and vital partner for them.

Terry McKenzie

I agree with Anna,
VOC belongs to the Chief Customer Officer. 

• Customer Success has client responsibility post-sale. 
• The CCO and team own the customer - from on-boarding through satisfaction through retention.
• There should be clear lines of responsibility between marketing, sales, and client ownership. 
• It should be clear to the client who is responsible for their satisfaction.

The Chief Customer Officer is the VOC to the CCO's company. And, the CCO and team is the company's evangelist to the clients.

Mike Gospe

Hello VOC strategists and customer leaders,

In one of my earlier VOC posts, I offered to host a peer group discussion on Building a VOC Framework. Looks like there is interest. (I am a 30-year marketing strategist, VOC architect, and professional Customer Advisory Board facilitator.)

I have a few slides that will set the context for our discussion. Then, we'll dive into a sharing of best practices on this question: How are you designing your VOC initiative for success?

DATE: Friday, August 7, 2020
TIME: 8:30 - 9:30 am PACIFIC
REGISTER HERE
 

I hope you can join us!

Kind regards,

Mike Gospe
Author: The Marketing High Ground
KickStart Alliance
Join me on LinkedIn

Anita Toth

@Mike Gospe The link doesn't appear to be working. 

Anita Toth

@Russell Bourne  Love that you mentioned each team should bring their own perspective to building the VoC. In your opinion, who should ultimately own the entire VoC? 

Mike Gospe

Hi all,

Sorry for the bad registration link. Please use this one to register for the VOC Peer Group Discussion on August 7, 8:30 am PACIFIC:

https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZUrdOugqTMqHtAgD90ihkD_KdDGhUS18lPm

I also posted a separate invitation as a new post. (That link seems to be working.)

Best,

Mike Gospe

Russell Bourne

Hi Anita, 

Ideally you'd see ultimate ownership by the senior CS leader.  CS is logically the department in the best position to compile the answers (in a CS platform or custom SFDC), filter the data, and come up with holistic customer profiles based on the results.  Then, CS can disseminate that data cross-functionally with recommended actions.

I'll emphasize that it's very important to have CEO sponsorship on the VoC project to make sure the other groups understand why their roles are important and why the entire project is important, and to stem any feelings of turf war or pushback.  

Mike, I registered for next week's webinar - looking forward to it!

Mike Gospe

Hi everyone,

Thanks for joining our peer group discussion on Voice of the Customer frameworks on Friday, Aug 7. For those who were unable to join, here's a link to the recording:

https://youtu.be/csqd40P6l5A

The discussion started with my sharing a framework I have used for many years to help enterprise organizations embrace cross-functional VOC initiatives. We then dove into a dynamic discussion that ranged from tips for Customer Success leaders who are just now starting to build/deploy a VOC program (How do we not get instantly overwhelmed?) to talking about VOC priorities in a COVID world (What are the VOC priorities for 2021?) I have attached the slides I used to start the discussion.

For more information on some of the VOC best practices I referenced . . .

Read: The Marketing High Ground

Visit The Marketing High Ground blog

Visit the CAB Resource Center

Visit the KickStart Alliance blog

Thanks for the great discussion!

#voiceofcustomer

Elizabeth Bukys

Can you clarify more around why/how you see Marketing owning direction on VOC initiatives? I followed along until then and it seems a little out of left field for anyone in the hyper-growth phase of startups--we do marketing directed at customers, of course, but until revenue from retained exceeds revenue from new, it seems off course to expect Marketing lead VOC efforts, no? Is this a "Marketing acting as the company's public persona" thing? Or something you see Marketing cultivating the relationships around?

Jonna Pedersen

Hi Mike!
 I'm clearly very late to this party but I'm wondering if you recorded the above session and if it's available somewhere? I know 2022 will be a big VOC year for my company, we don't have a CCO or anyone really "owning" VOC. So I'm looking for insights to stream requests for VOC (maybe other then a spreadsheet), and ideas on how to make the insights accessible to the entire company so we don't have to re-VOC customers for similar topics.
Thanks!
Jonna

Alka Tandan

On the VOC from Marketing: this is where it most often sat in enterprise companies - this is especially true from the days when VOC was last getting traction in a pre-SaaS eats everything world. As the world of Customer Success has emerged, there has been a shift in the language around customer/retention/growth and you are seeing the VOC sit in different places. If a Chief Customer Officer exists - great, that would be a great home as it is an org that recognizes the need to have a leader responsible for that x-functional approach. In product - led organizations you may often see this in product teams (and with hopes that there is someone paying attention to the full customer journey from product through to growth, including marketing and service). In other organizations, it might sit within customer success. So, all to echo above, it depends on how the org is structured, but hopefully that gives some context on why that diagram *might* have had marketing at the top. On how to pull it all together, again it depends on what VOC is like in your org. How much is product/usage/behavioural?  How involved is your marketing journey and the data for attribution? How much is feedback is qualitative / sentiment style vs direct questions at key touchpoints (customer support, onboarding, educational materials, etc)?  What kind of data dashboards exist in the company that would allow this to be centralized? So, depending on where and how this data will be integrated and your existing tech stack, this might differ. Happy to answer questions for your specific org, but might need to better understand how it is set up.