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Understanding their customers is more important to companies than ever before. The voice of the customer (VOC), the newest way to do so, involves capturing, analyzing and reporting on all the comments customers make about a company. These reports include analysis of information such as likes and dislikes, hot issues, trends and sentiments. VOC reports can help companies refine customer-facing strategies, improve products and services, streamline front- and back-office business processes, focus training and support operational decisions such as how to handle customer interactions. To support these activities usually requires new technologies, such as speech analytics for recorded calls, social media analytics, short surveys on smartphones and analysis of free-form text gathered through various media.

Tello recently launched a new service, Tello for Business, that has aspects of both surveying and social media. The service allows consumers to text comments about any company or download a smartphone app with which to send comments. Both methods fit current consumer behavior, as more and more people text or use mobile apps as their primary communication methods. Businesses registered with Tello’s service receive a text message or email when someone sends a comment to Tello about them. The businesses can choose how to respond, including replying instantly to the comment, acknowledging positive feedback or dealing with problems – for example, resolving a customer’s issue before the person leaves the location from which the feedback was sent. Such prompt response is likely to leave a customer feeling positive about the experience. Tello also provides registered companies with analysis of comments and dashboards that tie customer feedback to individual employees, allowing organizations to address personnel issues. We recommend that companies wishing to investigate customer-friendly ways to collect more feedback track the success of Tello’s new service or launch their own trial of it.