Ever had that sinking feeling when you return to your desk after a holiday and realise it’s going to take you at least a day just to organise your overflowing email inbox?
Over 205 billion emails are sent and received every day, the majority of them business-related. We spend a substantial part of our working lives just reading or responding to emails, time that many people feel could be spent more productively elsewhere. It’s got to the point where some companies are trying to reduce, or even completely cut out, email use among their staff.
Time-consumption is a big problem with written communication. But there’s another major issue that shouldn’t be overlooked, which is that when you’re reading words rather than hearing them spoken, it’s often difficult to correctly judge the tone of voice - even when there are emojis! That applies whether you’re looking at an email, a text message... or the results of a survey. Which is why market researchers are so excited about new developments in capturing Voice of Customer - specifically, in video format.
Express Yourself
Business success is dependent on listening to what your customers do and don’t want. Learning what people expect, prefer or dislike about different products and services is vital in shaping future offerings.
It’s lucky, then, that people like to talk. Expressing ourselves verbally can help us to reduce tension, see things more clearly, and forge stronger bonds with others. Terms such as “getting things off your chest” and “a weight off your mind” stem from this need humans feel to communicate with each other.
Spoken word, and other factors such as intonation, repetition, voice volume and rapidity of speech can contain far greater meaning than a couple of sentences typed into a box. Now, online survey software, such as that employed by Plotto, enable brands to rapidly and accurately collect direct, authentic Voice of Customer data through the use of video, with easily implemented survey tools, speech analysis and transcription services.
Use of Video when sourcing Voice of Customer
Marketers hope to determine the most authentic Voice of Customer possible. It’s a way to get behind the numbers that often make up a lot of marketing data, to the raw feelings which a person feels towards a brand, a product, a concept.
Direct speech, particularly over video so that it can be combined with physical and other non-verbal cues, is perhaps the best way to get at this insight. It helps to forge a deeper, more personal connection between speaker and listener. It leads to greater understanding, better communication, and better insights into consumer behaviours.
Hearing something aloud, we can pick up different inflections in a person’s voice that can suggest the speaker’s emotions, and whether they indicate something other than what the words themselves are saying. That’s simply not possible when reading an email, or feedback from a regular customer survey.
When we’re speaking to each other, we have to respond almost immediately. We don’t have the luxury in conversation of going off somewhere to craft a perfect reply. So video allows for an immediacy, a spontaneity, that promises less caution and more honesty.
Multiple Applications
They say talk is cheap. Certainly, as the technology advances, brands are finding it less and less expensive to analyse direct speech effectively.
Plotto serves a variety of business-friendly applications. With a platform that’s easy to understand and put into action, it’s a useful online survey tool. You can conduct video research, solicit video testimonials and customer feedback quickly and stress-free across a range of devices. You can capture more, and better-quality, information than you could ever hope to glean from a standard text-based survey.
Once you have your authentic Voice of Customer, you can put it to work for you in a number of ways. Make smarter strategic decisions. Improve your company’s performance across any department. Communicate better with your audience.
Learn more about how inColor can help your business reach out.
