{"id":84085,"date":"2025-04-11T09:50:40","date_gmt":"2025-04-11T08:50:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.prodpad.com\/?post_type=pp_glossary&p=84085"},"modified":"2025-04-11T09:50:41","modified_gmt":"2025-04-11T08:50:41","slug":"voice-of-the-customer","status":"publish","type":"pp_glossary","link":"https:\/\/www.prodpad.com\/glossary\/voice-of-the-customer\/","title":{"rendered":"Voice of the Customer"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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What is Voice of the Customer? <\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Voice of the Customer (VoC) is the proactive practice of going out and collecting, analyzing, and acting on explicit customer feedback to understand what they love, what drives them nuts, and what they really<\/em> want from your product or service.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you\u2019ve ever wished you could read your customers\u2019 minds to learn what they want from you, then listening to the VoC is the next best thing. It\u2019s a research methodology that congrigates all the different ways you can proactively go out there and listen to what your users are saying, gathering insights from surveys, reviews, interviews, social media, and more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The most important thing is that it\u2019s an activity. Unlike general customer feedback management – which we\u2019ll dig into a bit more in a bit – you\u2019re not twiddling your thumbs waiting for the feedback to come. You\u2019re building a process to go and get opinions and feedback and articulated pain points from your users. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Think of a butterfly farm where each butterfly represents a bit of customer feedback. Now, you could just stand still with your hand outstretched and wait for some butterflies to land in your palm. Some might, and you could grab them, put them in your test tube, and do whatever people do once they capture butterflies. This isn\u2019t Voice of the Customer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Instead, you can go grab a net and start chasing those butterflies down. That\u2019s a more active approach and more likely to get you more butterflies (and feedback). This is a better representation of the Voice of the Customer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

VoC is a proactive approach of using various ways of collecting customer feedback<\/a> and turning that insight into action.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is Voice of the Customer different from customer feedback management? <\/h3>\n\n\n\n

At first glance, Voice of the Customer (VoC) and customer feedback management might seem like the same thing. After all, they both involve gathering and using customer insights, right? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But there\u2019s a key difference: VoC is an active, strategic initiative, while general feedback management is more passive and broad.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

VoC vs customer feedback management: Active listening vs just collecting<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

VoC is the process of actively tuning in to what your customers are saying. You\u2019re deliberately seeking out their needs, expectations, and frustrations at moments during your product discovery process where you feel it\u2019s necessary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Feedback management, on the other hand, is more reactive. It\u2019s the system you use to collect and organize all sorts of input, be it direct feedback, product analytics<\/a>, and more, and then turn that feedback into insights to inform future product decisions<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another way to look at it is that your customer feedback management is always on, collecting and managing the feedback you get as it comes in. Feedback management describes your process of turning all forms of feedback into data. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Voice of the Customer is a deliberate research methodology where you actively decide to go out and gather the insights. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

When should you run a Voice of the Customer initiative? <\/h2>\n\n\n\n

So, we\u2019ve established that VoC is a proactive activity you do to learn from your users. When\u2019s best to do it? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

VoC is a foundational part of your end-to-end product discovery process. It\u2019s most valuable at the early stages of building a product or initiative, when you’re trying to uncover and define the real problems worth solving – and to explore how best to solve them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s particularly useful when:<\/p>\n\n\n\n