Using Voice of Customer Marketing to Win More Clients

Client satisfaction has always been the center of attention for most home care agencies, but did you know that their voice is now playing an important role in how you market yourself?

Client satisfaction has always been the center of attention for most home care agencies, but did you know that their voice is now playing an important role in how you market yourself?

In the 2020 Home Care Benchmarking Study, Peter Droubay, Director of Business Development and Training at Caring.com, said that “…New clients are starting to ask, ’What are your customers saying about your business?,’ and every one of them has decided at one time or another to ignore a business simply because the online reviews weren’t great.”

Voice of customer marketing is a very transparent form of communication that allows clients to gain a deeper, more authentic look into your organization. And right now, over 97% of consumers are looking at reviews before buying.

As voice of customer marketing becomes more and more necessary for home care agencies, here are some of the most important things to consider.

What is voice of customer marketing?

As simple as voice of customer marketing sounds, there’s a lot that you’re going to have to do on the backend. Even though the voice of the customer is not necessarily something you can control, there are small things you can do to create a better experience, while encouraging clients to share what they’ve been through.

Some of the different types of voice of customer marketing include online reviews and word-of-mouth.

One of the main responsibilities of voice of customer marketing is maintaining credibility throughout the organization – and pointing out the areas where clients see that you go above and beyond.

Voice of customer marketing takes more than just good reviews from clients. It’s what you do with those reviews and how you emphasize their importance that’s really going to make a difference.

According to founder and president of Gro Business Ventures, “many are surprised by the cost of customer acquisition and how much budget is wasted on targeting the wrong group of individuals. However, when you get it right through the customer’s voice, you lower the rate significantly.”

Since marketing is directed toward your clients specifically, you might as well use their voice. It can save you time, money, and internal effort in growing your database.

In fact, consumers are starting to trust online reviews so much more than ever before. Sometimes, clients are trusting online reviews even more than they would trust family/friends, or direct company marketing.

How to gather feedback

Good (or bad) feedback isn’t just something that pops up out of the blue. It takes nurturing, commitment, dedication, and passionate care to get your clients to start talking about their experiences.

While you might think you’re doing a pretty good job (and you likely are), unless you have the feedback from your clients to back up that sentiment, there’s no way to prove your point.

To successfully gather feedback, you should be continually surveying your clients and caregivers, and encouraging them to share their opinions online or with family/friends.

While we’ve already stressed the importance of surveying clients in previous articles, it’s important to make sure you’re selecting the right methodologies. You’re going to want to distribute surveys over the phone, through email, or in-person.

Most of the agencies we’ve worked with have found that phone surveys are the most effective in receiving feedback because of the high response rate and the ability to ask follow-up questions. Once you survey clients, you can ask them to share their opinions online or use what they said in your marketing efforts.

How to market feedback and use it to your advantage

As we’ve talked about before, clients trust other clients. If you get good reviews, they don’t just have to sit online on Facebook or Google. If you see an especially good one, you should be highlighting that in your marketing efforts. You can share it as a testimonial, on social media, in introduction calls, or through marketing promo emails.

Some examples include:

When using the voice of the customer in your marketing, you should be using a well-rounded approach. Not every client or potential client is going to respond the same way so it’s important to try multiple methods.

Another way to use the voice of your customer in your marketing is to find keywords or phrases that stand out or are repeatedly used by clients. Those can be powerful in grabbing attention, especially if it’s something you haven’t previously been highlighting.

Perhaps you’ve had multiple clients talk about your “individualized care plans.” If there aren’t a lot of agencies in your area using this, not only is this a differentiator, but it takes what’s important to your clients and allows you to focus in on it.

Next steps

According to Cory Capoccia, “online reviews are the best thing that ever happened to small businesses,” and we couldn’t agree more.

Online reviews (and any other type of voice of customer marketing) can completely transform a company from being revenue-centric to being client-centric. Of course, the main goal with any business is to make money, but that doesn’t mean that all of your marketing has to revolve around you. You ultimately want to be showing what you’ve done and how that’s impacted your past clients’ lives.

Tell us in the comments how your agency has used the voice of the customer to acquire new clients!