VoC: Why companies must listen to customers - for real

The Voice of the Customer (VoC) gets overlooked too often to the detriment of brands, according to recent research from McKinsey & Company. Understanding how customer feedback plays into decision-making is vital to delivering exceptional customer experience. That's why this research is worth visiting. 

CX Network sat down with McKinsey & Company colleagues Alex Rodriguez, senior partner and Aurélia Bettati, associate director, to discuss these findings and put context around the research. Discover how infrequently brands are linking their strategies to the VoC and then how that translates into poor engagement.  

CX Network: Why do legacy assumptions persist in CX strategy, even when customer behaviors and expectations are clearly evolving? 

Alex Rodriguez: Legacy assumptions often persist in CX strategy because acting on customer insight is far harder than collecting it. Our own McKinsey research shows that while 63 percent of leaders cite customer feedback as a top source for growth ideas, just 15 percent say they consistently incorporate that feedback into decisions. Only 23 percent regularly engage with customers to ensure their offerings deliver real value. The result is a disconnect between intention and execution. 

Growth outperformers break this cycle by moving beyond retrospective feedback. They use predictive analytics to anticipate emerging needs, scanning not only their own sector, but also adjacent industries for broader shifts. This allows them to pinpoint customers’ core desires and adapt products or services proactively. By coupling insight with decisive action, they challenge entrenched norms, avoid complacency and build strategies that evolve in step with customer expectations, rather than lagging them.

CX Network: What are the risks of relying on outdated assumptions rather than real-time customer data? Can you give an example?

AR: Relying on outdated assumptions rather than real-time customer data exposes businesses to serious risks, including fragmented customer experiences, missed growth opportunities and declining competitiveness. In today’s digital economy - less than one-third of the value comes from modern digitalization. Yet, many organizations still hesitate to fully embrace tools such as AI, predictive analytics and automated decision-making to meet evolving customer needs. When leaders cling on to what worked in the past, they risk making slow, siloed decisions that fail to reflect current market dynamics.

A clear example comes from the energy sector, where providers that ignored real-time customer signals struggled to adapt their services to shifting usage patterns during periods of high demand and price volatility. Instead of integrating data across channels, they digitized in isolated pockets, creating disjointed systems and inconsistent service experiences. By contrast, providers using integrated, real-time analytics could anticipate needs, personalize communication and deliver a seamless end-to-end journey, turning disruption into a competitive advantage.

CX Network: How can organizations effectively capture the true voice of the customer beyond surveys and NPS scores?

Aurélia Bettati: Capturing the true VoC goes far beyond simply collecting feedback. It requires a deep understanding of the context behind customer decisions, behaviors and experiences. Leading organizations achieve this by immersing themselves in customers’ lives, observing how products and services integrate into everyday routines. By paying close attention to friction points, unmet needs and emotional drivers, they uncover insights that traditional metrics, surveys or analytics often overlook. These insights are then transformed into concrete actions, from new product or service offerings to enhancements and experience redesigns that anticipate customer needs before they are explicitly expressed. 

The most effective companies treat customer understanding as an ongoing, immersive practice rather than a one-off exercise, embedding empathy and observation into their culture. By doing so, they build stronger relationships, drive innovation and create experiences that resonate on both practical and emotional levels, turning customer insight into a sustained competitive advantage.

CX Network: What role does unstructured data (like call transcripts or social media comments) play in understanding customers more accurately?

AB: Unstructured data is revolutionizing the way organizations understand their customers by capturing nuances that traditional structured surveys often miss, including emotion, intent and context. According to our research, voice conversations account for the majority of incoming customer interactions, yet most organizations analyze less than 2 percent of these interactions. Manual sampling and transcription errors have historically limited the insights that companies could extract, leaving vast amounts of valuable information untapped.

Recent advances in natural-language processing (NLP) are changing this landscape, enabling organizations to transform unstructured voice and conversational data into actionable intelligence. AI-powered analysis can uncover root causes of customer dissatisfaction, identify opportunities for operational efficiency and flag compliance risks. Companies leveraging these capabilities have reported cost savings of 20 to 30 percent, measurable improvements in customer satisfaction (CSAT) of 10 percent or more and stronger sales performance. Ultimately, unstructured data empowers service functions to move beyond cost centers, evolving into strategic value creators that drive growth and customer loyalty.

CX Network: What does a truly customer-led CX transformation look like in practice?

AB: A truly customer-led CX transformation centers on experience-led growth - a clear shift in focus from chasing new acquisitions to unlocking value from existing customers. Our previous McKinsey research shows that 80 percent of value creation for top-performing companies comes from their core business, underscoring the importance of nurturing the relationships you already have. These leaders begin with an audacious future vision linked to financial goals, such as improving retention or increasing share of wallet and aligning CX initiatives to those targets. Embedding growth involves redesigning customer journeys, instilling new mindsets and building capabilities, governance and technology that make exceptional experiences repeatable and measurable. 

A striking case in point: A mobile telecom operator listened closely to customer call-center feedback and acted upon it. The operator eliminated restrictive contracts, extended upgrade offers to all customers and overhauled service. This resulted in a churn-rate reduction of 75 percent. Additionally, customer satisfaction soared and revenue nearly doubled - far outpacing competitors. 

A customer-led CX transformation is less about incremental tweaks and more about embedding empathy, insight and purpose at every level of the business and translating that into tangible, lasting growth.

Quick links: 

• Why CX leaders should build a "yes" culture
• Ebrahim Hyder of Michael Kors builds a customer-centric call center
• A guide to making the most out of customer insights