Henry Ford, the pioneer who made automobiles affordable for middle-class Americans, famously said:
“If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.”
But that doesn’t mean researching what customers do, think, and say won’t help. You just have to listen beyond words to determine what they mean. And that’s the essence of VoC research.
In this article, we’ll show you how to develop your VoC program. It’s easy when you follow a step-by-step process and let our AI-powered research assistant help you.
Marvin can quickly parse your customer data — create a free account today to centralize feedback and:
- Understand your users’ needs
- Better anticipate their expectations
- Start designing experiences that resonate

What Is Voice of the Customer?
If you’re wondering, “What does VoC stand for in business?” the answer depends on the context. VoC means “voice of the customer,” but it’s not just about listening to users.
In marketing, VoC is persuasive. It helps you craft compelling sales messages that sound like mind-reading. The impact comes from using your audience’s exact words—their frustrations, dreams, and quirks.
In product design and development, the voice of customer research needs interpretation. You still gather users’ raw, unfiltered words from surveys, interviews, focus groups, reviews, and support chats. But instead of being a mere note-taker, you:
- Identify complaints, compliments, ideas, frustrations, etc.
- Interpret what users say to uncover what they mean.
The second step is critical.
VoC phrases such as “This app is slow” could mean more than one thing. Maybe they want faster load times. Or fewer steps to complete a task. Or a more seamless workflow.
You can’t just know, and you’re not allowed to guess. Guessing is costly.
Want your voice of customer market research to make a difference in product development? If so, it has to translate user feedback into actionable insights. That’s why, if you’re a designer or developer, capturing the VoC requires that you:
- Notice how users speak
- Look for patterns
- Analyze the feedback’s context
- Figure out their unspoken needs
- Come up with a plan to meet those needs
Significance of VoC in CX Strategy
In terms of customer experience, VoC is more than a reality check. It helps you go from designing for your users to designing with them.
You want this voice to guide your product decisions. This way, you no longer design what you think users need but what they tell you they need.
VoC in CX strategy allows you to:
- Prioritize resources: Your team can stop guessing and focus on what matters most to the customer.
- Deepen trust and loyalty: Users see their feedback shaping the product, realize you care about their needs, and become more loyal.
- Predict future needs: By tracking trends in user feedback, you can spot emerging expectations and keep your product ahead of competitors.

Key Elements of VoC Research
What exactly do you need to nail VoC research? Here are the key elements you can’t afford to ignore:
1. Feedback Channels
These are your listening posts, where users shout, whisper, or sigh about your product.
Channels include surveys, support chats, app reviews, focus groups, analytics, etc. Each one provides a unique perspective on the user experience.
A designer, for instance, might:
- Check app analytics to see which workflows frustrate users
- Turn to focus groups to uncover unspoken needs
2. Data Variety
VoC starts with words, so direct comments like “This is confusing” matter.
However, the focus should also be on behaviors, preferences, and trends. Indirect signals—high drop-off rates or frequent support tickets for the same issue—are also relevant.
Combining qualitative and quantitative data gives you the whole picture.
3. Contextual Understanding
Feedback doesn’t live in a vacuum. You need context to understand why users feel a certain way.
For instance, “This app is slow” could be tied to using it on older devices. Or “I can’t find the search bar” might relate to screen size or layout issues.
4. Feedback Integration
Next, you need to work the VoC into your design and development processes. This includes linking feedback to product goals, user personas, or specific features.
Are you getting user complaints about onboarding? Use them to guide revisions on your tutorial flows.
5. Scalability
As your product grows, your VoC system must scale. You’ll need tools and processes to handle larger feedback volumes without losing focus.
For instance, consistently tagging and categorizing feedback ensures nothing is lost. Our automated tagging and note-taking app will help you do this.

Methods to Collect VoC Data
Consider the following VoC research methods to gather diverse insights and better understand your users. They’re the most popular, and for good reasons:
- Surveys: Online surveys are quick and scalable. You can ask targeted questions and gather both quantitative and qualitative feedback.
- Interviews: One-on-one interviews let you dig deeper into the user’s thoughts. They’re ideal for exploring pain points and uncovering needs, frustrations, or unspoken expectations.
- Focus groups: These groups gather a handful of users to discuss their experiences. They help you spot common themes and generate ideas through shared conversations.
- Support interactions: Users often share detailed problems or suggestions in customer support tickets, chats, or call logs.
- App reviews and social media: Monitor app stores, forums, or social platforms. These user comments contain unsolicited, honest opinions about your product.
- Analytics: Behavioral data, such as click paths or drop-off rates, shows how users interact with your product. It’s a great way to spot pain points without asking directly for them.
- Usability tests: Watch users interact with your product in real-time. You’ll notice struggles and areas for improvement that surveys might miss.
How to Choose a VoC Method
Want to get the right insights without wasting time or resources?
Make sure that the method you choose will tick all the right boxes in terms of:
- Research goals: Match the method to your goals. Use surveys for broad input or interviews for in-depth insights.
- User availability: Choose a method that fits your users’ schedules. Interviews require time, while surveys are quicker. That doesn’t mean you should avoid interviews, but find ways to make them smoother.
- Type of feedback you need: When looking for specific issues, usability tests work well. Analytics or support tickets are better when you need to spot trends.
- Resources and budget: Some methods, like focus groups, need more time and money. Pick what’s realistic for your team.
- Stage of product development: The early stages need interviews for ideation, while later stages benefit from usability tests or analytics.

Top 5 Voice of the Customer Tools
The tools you pick can make or break your VoC research.
Here are five VoC research software platforms to streamline your process and help you get actionable insights:
1. Marvin

Our AI-powered platform simplifies qualitative research. It covers the entire process—from collecting feedback to uncovering actionable insights.
With Marvin, you can:
- Centralize and create a searchable database of all your qualitative data.
- Use AI to transcribe, take notes, and tag your user interviews.
- Automatically analyze patterns, trends, and emotions in user feedback.
- Run thematic analysis and survey response processing.
All these features are particularly helpful in VoC research. They allow you to interpret and act on users’ needs faster.
To top it off, Marvin integrates with tools like Zoom, Miro, and Google Sheets. In short, it keeps your workflow smooth.
Create your free Marvin account to start uncovering VoC insights today!
2. Typeform

Need an online form-building and survey platform? Typeform helps you create conversational surveys that feel personal and engaging.
This tool is perfect for collecting user feedback quickly and effectively. Its clean design and user-friendly interface make it easy to gather qualitative and quantitative data.
3. Google Analytics

Google Analytics provides behavioral insights by tracking user actions on your website or app.
Within the analytics dashboard, you can quickly spot the drop-off points and areas where users struggle.
Consider using it as a complementing tool for the qualitative insights from other VoC tools.
4. Miro

Miro is a digital whiteboard that’s great for organizing and visualizing feedback. It’s also one of the tools Marvin integrates with, allowing you to take VoC insights further.
Use it to map user insights, create affinity diagrams, or brainstorm solutions with your team.
5. Slack

Your customer-facing teams will generate a lot of VoC data.
Slack is a chat for teams. You can use it to collect feedback directly from internal teams or support channels.
Experiment with Slack to create dedicated VoC channels. This way, you can share user insights as soon as your teams receive them.
How to Implement VoC Research
Implementing VoC research requires a structured process to gather, interpret, and act on user feedback.
Here are the steps you need to take to establish this process:
1. Define Your Goals
Start by asking what you want to learn from your VoC research. Are you looking to improve a certain feature? Or perhaps you want to identify specific pain points?
Clear goals will give your research focus and prevent you from wasting effort and resources.
2. Choose Feedback Channels
Pick the right tools for gathering data.
Surveys are great for direct questions, while app reviews or support tickets can uncover recurring issues.
Ideally, the channels you use should be where users interact the most with your product.
3. Plan Your Questions
Craft questions that get to the root of user needs.
Instead of “Do you like this feature?” ask, “How does this feature help you complete your tasks?”
The more open-ended questions you’ll use, the richer the insights.
4. Collect Feedback
Make it easy for users to share.
You can add a feedback button in your app. Or you can send a short survey after key interactions, such as completing onboarding.
The less effort it takes, the more responses you’ll get.

5. Organize the Data
Feedback is useless without structure. To organize your data:
- Group it into categories, such as usability, performance, specific feature requests, etc.
- Use tags to spot patterns and main themes.
This step is similar to sorting puzzle pieces. Without it, you’ll have a hard time seeing the whole picture.
6. Analyze for Insights
Look for trends and themes in the data.
To validate your findings, combine qualitative feedback (complaints about a feature) with quantitative data (usage stats).
When users say a workflow is clunky, check if task completion rates back this up.
7. Turn Insights into Action
Based on user impact and business goals, prioritize what to address first. Then, create a clear roadmap of changes tied to the feedback.
If users frequently struggle with navigation, fixing that should come before adding new features.
8. Test and Validate Changes
Before rolling out updates, test them with users. Keep the loop open by asking for feedback on the new version.
You can use A/B testing or beta groups to see if the changes solve the problem.
9. Share Findings with Your Team
Create a research report that clearly presents insights and next steps in an actionable format.
Use visuals like charts or user quotes to make the feedback relatable.
This approach helps everyone involved, from developers to stakeholders, to understand and support the changes.
10. Establish Continuous Feedback
Like many research processes, VoC isn’t a one-time event. That’s why setting up systems to collect feedback regularly is essential.
Consider adding periodic surveys or monitoring reviews over time. By keeping your finger on the VoC pulse, you’ll stay aligned with evolving user needs.

VoC Research Best Practices
Many teams collect mountains of data but never turn it into meaningful action. The following voice of the customer best practices will help you avoid that.
Here’s how to go beyond the basics and make your process smarter, sharper, and more user-focused:
- Ensure user diversity: To avoid bias, use a mix of user types—power users, new users, churned users, etc.
- Ask open-ended questions: These will let users express needs, frustrations, and ideas in their own words.
- Focus on root causes, not just symptoms: Dig deeper into feedback to find the underlying issues, the “why” behind the “what.”
- Leverage multiple data points: Combine qualitative and quantitative feedback for a complete picture.
- Use personas to contextualize feedback: Link user feedback to personas to better understand different needs.
- Balance negative and positive feedback: Don’t focus only on complaints. Look at what users praise to understand what’s working and replicate it in other areas.
- Regularly update research practices: Review your VoC methods periodically to ensure they’re still effective and aligned with user behavior.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Before we wrap up, here are some quick answers to common VoC questions:
What Are the Four Steps of VoC?
At its core, VoC involves four critical steps:
- Collect feedback through surveys, interviews, or analytics.
- Organize and categorize the data into themes.
- Analyze the feedback to uncover insights.
- Take action by implementing changes based on findings.
Which Benefits Can You Gain from a VoC Program?
A voice of the customer program improves user satisfaction, loyalty, and retention. Such a program will help you identify pain points early and prioritize fixes.
By doing so, you’ll align your product with user needs, offer better experiences, and increase engagement.
What Are the Best Voice of the Customer Questions to Ask?
The best VoC questions depend on your research goals. However, valuable questions have two standard features. They focus on user needs and frustrations and are open-ended.
A few examples include:
- “What challenges do you face when using this feature?”
- “What’s one improvement you’d like to see?”
- “How does this product help you meet your goals?”
How Do You Ensure the Accuracy of VoC Research Findings?
You can do a lot to ensure accuracy. Most importantly, always consider context and validate findings.
Gather VoC from multiple sources, such as surveys, interviews, user testing, and analytics. You can also use qualitative data triangulation to avoid misinterpreting feedback.

Conclusion
Whether you’re a product designer, developer, or researcher, VoC helps your work exceed expectations.
Customers are demanding, as they should. By capturing and interpreting their feedback, you can make informed decisions that:
- Align with real needs
- Solve pain points
- Improve experiences
Wish to leverage the value of VoC market research? Let our AI-powered research assistant help you make it seamless and impactful.
From advanced AI analysis to effortless data organization, Marvin simplifies the complex.
Create your free account today. You’ll be able to quickly analyze your VoC research and turn it into a competitive advantage for your product.