Smoke Customer Intelligence, a Voice of the Customer software provider, has been named as a Notable Vendor in the Gartner "Market Guide for Voice-of-the-Customer Applications" report. Gartner defines Voice of the Customer applications as those able to gather feedback across multiple channels, analyse such data and provide insight via dashboards.
There is overwhelming evidence that Customer Experience, and listening to the Voice of the Customer enables competitive advantage. Furthermore, the insights garnered from such programmes allow organisations to adapt and genuinely delight their clients, making VOC a business imperative in the new decade.
The Gartner Market Guide for Voice of the Customer applications profiles global vendors in the VOC industry, providing a mechanism to compare alternatives. "We are quite proud to be mentioned as a Notable Vendor in this years Market Guide", says Andrew Cook, CEO, Smoke Customer Intelligence. "As we engage more and more with global clients, we see our software providing real value thanks to its multi-channel functionality, ease of use and ability to integrate into existing infrastructures. Listening to one's customers shouldn't be difficult, and the data gathered should provide insights that unlock the opportunity to improve service delivery across the board. We are seeing customers being able to just that thanks to our software."
Smoke Customer Intelligence's platform offers key differentiators within the VOC industry thanks to its multi-channel functionality, and particularly thanks to its post-call interactive voice response (IVR) component.
"It is so important to reach customers where they are at, and via the communication channel they prefer" continues Cook. We see increased response rates when an organisation can communicate with customers across channels. This increase in response rate directly impacts the value that can be extracted from data".
Within contact centre environments, in particular, customers want to be able to give feedback immediately after a conversation with an agent, making the Smoke CI integrated IVR solution ideal. The combination of immediate feedback and an escalation module enabling rapid service recovery has enabled Smoke CI clients to increase customer retention by as much as 50%, while at the same time allowing them to optimise processes and decrease costs by 18%.
"As Gartner says, there are more than 1,000 vendors that offer some form of feedback capability with the majority providing no more than simple email surveying of customers to collect direct feedback. We were recognised as a notable vendor due to our end-to-end VOC capabilities, covering a range of touchpoints and channels, as well as our ability to translate data gathered into insights that make a real impact within our client's organisations", concludes Cook. As we enter the next decade of Customer Experience, we will continue to develop our software in conjunction with market needs to ensure that we remain amongst the ranks of top players globally",
The Market Guide for Voice-of-the-Customer Applications, authored by Jim Davies and Ed Thompson, is available to Gartner clients on gartner.com.