Frameworks save you time and help you come back with exactly what you need from your research.
This is especially true in VoC research, where qualitative feedback abounds but is often messy. You must be thorough and well-organized at every step to make the most of it. And that’s what this article will guide you with.
If you’re ready for a more focused approach to your VoC strategy, read on to understand:
- How a voice of the customer framework works
- Why it’s essential to use one in your research
- How to make the most of it, ideally using limited resources
TL;DR – Best Voice of the Customer Frameworks
VoC frameworks streamline how you collect, organize, and act on user feedback. They take you from data to actionable insights that improve your product and user experience faster.
Don’t know where to start? Consider one of the following six powerful frameworks:
| VoC Framework | Strength |
| The Five-Stage VoC Model | Break the process into five clearly defined stages |
| Customer Journey Mapping | Understand user pain points |
| The Kano Model | Prioritize must-haves, performance features, and delighters |
| Critical-to-Quality Characteristics (CTQ) | Define measurable attributes that meet user expectations |
| Net Promoter Score (NPS) | Gauge loyalty with a single, game-changing question |
| Jobs to Be Done (JTBD) | Focus on the outcomes users are trying to achieve |
Despite the different options and their strengths, success depends on the research tools you pair your framework with.
Marvin, our AI-powered research assistant, can complement any VoC framework you implement. This tool helps with everything from organizing feedback to uncovering trends and prioritizing actions.
Create your free Marvin account today to:
- Transform how you manage customer feedback.
- Turn your VoC frameworks into real-world results.
What Is Voice of the Customer Framework?
A VoC framework is a structured way of handling customer feedback. Its goal is to:
- Uncover your users’ wants, needs, and expectations
- Create a repeatable process that makes feedback actionable
Like any framework, it has steps or stages. These steps guide you through gathering input, analyzing it, and turning it into insights.
The key is consistency. You implement a framework to continually capture user feedback and use it to improve your product.
Benefits of Using a VoC Framework
Frameworks keep you always ready to capture and use customer voices in your design. The benefits of using frameworks with Voice of the Customer programs include:
- Focus on the right priorities: You pinpoint what matters most to users and prioritize the updates that make the biggest impact.
- Reduced guesswork: Clear, organized feedback eliminates the need for assumptions. Instead, you base your design on what you know users want.
- Improved user satisfaction: Acting on consistent feedback helps create features that resonate with users. This leads to happier customers.
- Enhanced collaboration: A structured framework gives you a common language for the voice of customer feedback. It makes teamwork easier.
- Long-term trust: Users who see their feedback shaping your products are more likely to trust and stick with your brand.
Essential Components of a VoC Framework
For your VoC framework to work smoothly, it needs a few key components. Each plays its part, helping you either select, understand, or act on user feedback:
- Feedback collection: It can include surveys, qualitative interviews, support tickets, or app reviews. Every framework needs a feedback channel.
- Data organization: Once you’ve collected feedback, you must group it by themes or categories. This helps you spot trends.
- Analysis tools: UX tools make sense of your voice of customer data. You can use charts to track trends or heatmaps to see where users get stuck.
- Action plans: This is where insights start turning into results. You prioritize changes, create timelines, and assign tasks.
- Follow-up mechanisms: Share updates with users who provided product feedback. Let your team know the impact of their efforts.
6 Best Voice of the Customer Frameworks
Since a framework is just a way to streamline a process, there’s no one-size-fits-all approach. Different frameworks tackle different aspects of customer feedback.
Here are six top VoC frameworks you can explore, depending on your needs:
1. The Five-Stage VoC Model
This framework is more of a general approach for whenever you need a smooth, clear cycle. It breaks VoC research into five stages where you:
- Collect
- Analyze
- Share
- Act
- Monitor
VoC can focus on different aspects of the user experience. With the five-stage model, no feedback is ignored, no matter what questions are asked.
For example, you can:
- Collect user feedback through app reviews
- Analyze it for usability issues
- Share insights with your team
- Fix the key usability problems
- Track how those fixes perform over time
2. Customer Journey Mapping
The mapping approach monitors the user experience from start to finish. You collect feedback at each step to see where users encounter friction.
One application involves mapping your app’s sign-up flow. This should show you where users drop off or feel confused.
3. The Kano Model
The Kano model helps you sort feedback into three categories:
- Must-haves
- Performance features
- Delighters
This framework helps you prioritize what to work on first. If users demand faster load times, that’s a must-have. If they ask for new customization options, that’s a delighter.
4. Critical-to-Quality Characteristics (CTQ)
As the name suggests, CTQ defines product or service attributes critical to meeting user expectations.
The approach can turn vague user needs into concrete design goals. Here’s just an example:
- General feedback: “Make it easy to use.”
- CTQ feedback: “Users should be able to sign up in under two minutes.”
CTQ becomes even more powerful when paired with the Kano Analysis. Use it to define “quality” for must-haves or performance features. Then, run Kano to decide where to focus based on user emotions and priorities.
5. Net Promoter Score (NPS) Framework
The NPS uses a simple question: “How likely are users to recommend your product?” It quickly gauges satisfaction and segments users into promoters, passives, or detractors.
You can use it to:
- Dive deeper into what makes promoters happy.
- Improve the user experience and turn passives into promoters.
- Turn detractors’ feedback into actionable improvements that win them back.
6. Jobs to Be Done (JTBD) Framework
This method focuses on understanding the “job” users “hire” your product to do. It helps you see beyond the features and focus on outcomes.
For example, you might think that improving the design of CTA buttons is a priority. However, the JTBD framework might reveal that users need faster workflow management.
Pro tip: No matter your chosen framework, our AI-powered qualitative research platform, Marvin, can help you implement it. Create a free Marvin account today to collect and analyze VoC research faster and easier.
How to Design Your Own VoC Framework
Your product, team, and users form a unique combination. That means you may need a different approach than the common frameworks.
Want to stop adapting to someone else’s playbook? Here’s how to create a VoC framework of your own:
1. Define Your Goals
Start by deciding what you want to learn from your collected feedback.
Are you trying to identify patterns in usability issues? Want to rank feature requests or gauge satisfaction levels? Defining these goals will:
- Give your framework focus
- Enable it to deliver actionable insights
For example, you’re looking to run a post-launch survey. Your goal might be to pinpoint which features delight users and which cause frustration.
2. Organize Feedback Sources
Once you’ve gathered raw data, list the sources — surveys, interviews, reviews, or analytics.
Understanding the origin of your data helps you assess its reliability and context.
Feedback from app reviews might focus on user frustration. Survey responses often reveal deeper insights into satisfaction. Mapping all these feedback sources will:
- Prevent analysis overwhelm
- Let you handle each dataset in the right way
3. Create a Data Structure
Decide how to categorize the raw data for clarity and consistency. Categories might include usability, performance, or design feedback, all tailored to your product’s needs.
Use these categories to sort comments, complaints, and suggestions. For example, user reviews complaining about “confusing navigation” should go to a Usability tag.
A clear structure makes it easy to spot recurring design issues, feature gaps, or other trends.
4. Develop a Prioritization Method
Prioritization helps you focus your energy on what matters most. To develop a prioritization method, you can:
- Set criteria to determine what’s most important
- Use relevant factors such as:
- Frequency: How often the issue appears
- Impact: How much it affects users
- Effort: How hard it is to fix
If 40 percent of users mention a bug in the checkout process, it’s likely a high priority. On the other hand, if users request a minor aesthetic tweak, it might rank lower.
5. Build an Action Plan
Turn insights into tasks with clear owners and timelines:
- Break big tasks into smaller, manageable steps.
- Assign tasks to specific team members and ensure regular check-ins to track progress.
For example, users report slow load times. Your action plan will include analyzing performance metrics, optimizing code, and testing improvements before release.
6. Implement Feedback Mechanisms
Use your framework to guide how you communicate updates and changes.
For internal communications, create a shared dashboard to track which feedback is addressed and how.
For users, close the loop by letting them know their input made a difference. You can publish release notes highlighting fixes based on feedback:
“We’ve improved the search function thanks to your suggestions!”
7. Iterate and Improve
Your framework should evolve along with your product and team’s evolution. By iterating, you keep the framework relevant and effective.
Schedule regular reviews of your process to identify gaps or inefficiencies. You might notice surveys aren’t yielding enough specific feedback and need tweaking.
Key Metrics for Measuring VoC Framework Success
Having a system isn’t enough. You must also ensure that it works as intended. Tracking the following metrics will help you determine whether your VoC framework is serving its purpose.
- Feedback volume: A high volume means your framework effectively engages users across multiple channels.
- Do survey response rates or app reviews increase after you launch a feedback initiative? It means you’re on the right track.
- Categorization accuracy: If feedback is consistently misclassified or too vague, you need to refine your data structure.
- Usability complaints should fall into a “usability” bucket, not get lost under “general feedback.”
- Time to insight: How quickly does your framework transform raw feedback into actionable insights? How long does it take to analyze data and share results with your team?
- With Marvin, you can get insights within one hour of uploading your user research data. This shorter time frame makes your process efficient, helping you respond faster to user needs.
- Resolution rate: How many user-reported issues are resolved after being flagged in the framework?
- When 80 percent of the reported usability issues are fixed within a sprint, your framework drives real action.
- Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) score changes: Compare CSAT scores before and after implementing changes based on feedback.
- If satisfaction increases, your framework effectively identifies and addresses pain points.
- User retention or churn rates: After you address their feedback, monitor whether users stay longer or leave less frequently.
- If complaints about a buggy feature drop and retention improves, your VoC framework is helping boost loyalty.
- Internal adoption rate: Measure how often your team uses the framework. High adoption means your process is practical and valuable.
- When team members rely on the insights for sprint planning or product updates, your framework is driving alignment.
Challenges in Implementing VoC Frameworks
Teams often start with high expectations of seamless feedback systems and actionable insights. Then, real-world obstacles pop up. Eventually, turning raw feedback into meaningful improvements isn’t as easy as it looks. Here’s why:
- Overwhelming feedback volume: Collecting and managing feedback are two separate tasks. You might receive a flood of comments from surveys, support tickets, and reviews. Without a system to filter and prioritize, it’s hard to know what deserves attention.
- Lack of clear ownership: If it’s unclear who handles feedback analysis or takes action, things fall through the cracks. Design may assume development is handling usability complaints, leaving issues to linger unresolved.
- Inconsistent data quality: Poor data quality limits the value of your framework. Feedback can be vague, incomplete, or biased depending on the source. For instance, open-text survey responses might lack detail, making it challenging to act on them.
- Difficulty in prioritization: With so many suggestions and issues, deciding what to tackle first can feel impossible. Users may impatiently request both minor UI tweaks and critical bug fixes. What’s it gonna be first? Where will you focus your resources knowing that, either way, someone will be upset?
- Resistance to change: Teams may hesitate to embrace new processes, especially if they’re already juggling tight deadlines. Without buy-in, your framework risks being ignored or only partially implemented.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Ready to launch into a choose-your-own-VoC-framework adventure? Here’s what else you should know:
How Do VoC Frameworks Differ From Customer Experience Programs?
VoC frameworks focus on collecting and analyzing feedback to understand customer needs.
Customer experience (CX) programs are broader. They aim to design and improve every interaction customers have with your product or brand.
Therefore, VoC is a research tool that feeds insights into a larger CX strategy.
Are VoC Frameworks Suitable for Small Businesses?
Yes, VoC frameworks work for businesses of any size. They help focus on the most critical feedback and meet customer expectations. And they do so without overwhelming your resources or team. If you have a small business, you can start with a simple framework based on surveys or reviews.
How Often Should VoC Frameworks Be Updated?
Update your framework whenever your product or team evolves to keep it effective and relevant. If you add new features, change feedback channels, or spot gaps in your process, readjust.
Conclusion
VoC frameworks consistently bring user feedback to life. They help you:
- Stay organized.
- Understand what users need.
- Turn insights into actions that improve your product.
The secret is to find a process that balances consistency with flexibility. You want to collect and act on feedback consistently. But you need to evolve as your users and product grow. That’s where Marvin comes in to help you:
- Tackle the complexity of VoC frameworks
- Organize feedback, uncover trends, and prioritize improvements in one platform
This AI-powered qualitative research platform was designed for seamless collaboration.
Start your free Marvin account today. Use it to turn your VoC framework into a driver for better products and happier users.
