Customer feedback can make or break a business. Yet most companies still grapple with how to collect and use customer insights effectively.

According to the CallMiner 2023 CX Landscape Report, most teams still collect mostly solicited feedback (71% in 2023 vs 79% in 2022) from their customers. Half of organisations say they lack effective communication between departments when aligning on CX data and customer feedback, and 43% admit to a lack of clarity on how to act on data insights.

A recent Salesforce survey confirms that many teams are contending with too much data: 33% of business leaders said they can’t generate meaningful insights from their data, and 30% said they were overwhelmed by the sheer volume.

So, how do you cut through the noise and use customer data to drive meaningful business improvements?

Combining solicited and unsolicited customer feedback

An overreliance on solicited feedback, such as surveys and customer reviews, neglects the goldmine of unsolicited feedback you don’t have to ask for. Unsolicited feedback – such as the conversations that happen in your contact centre, social engagements and more – often contains the most actionable insights. Channels like surveys, while valuable, typically focus on the highs and lows — leaving a whole middle ground of feedback undiscovered.

This unsolicited data can be applied to a wide variety of business outcomes, ranging from contact centre agent coaching and performance improvements, to compliance adherence, to marketing and sales effectiveness, to product innovation.

Not to mention, unsolicited feedback can make your surveys better. For example, you could segment contact centre data by customers who called about a specific product type, to survey them with more targeted questions. The two types of feedback can often work in tandem to provide a more holistic view of the customer.

Analysing this feedback at scale is the critical part of extracting practical insights and unlocking value for your team.

Unlocking value from customer insights

How do you collect and analyse unsolicited feedback without overwhelming your team? That’s where AI and automation can help identify the most valuable insights. Despite the availability of technology, a balance between automated and manual processes remains elusive for many.

According to the CallMiner CX Landscape Report, there is a slightly greater emphasis on automated (55%) vs manual (45%) tasks, but not by much. However, those that do automate data analysis are able to use this data to make better business decisions (61% vs 51% in organisations where processes are more manual).

Most contact centres today do manual quality assurance (QA) monitoring. Typical QA analysts can often only listen to three to five random calls per agent, per month — less than 1% of overall interactions. By analysing all of the interactions, contact centre managers can give agents a clearer picture of what works and what needs improvement via automated scorecards and data-driven coaching recommendations. And the results are measurable, which makes it easier to convince others to expand use cases of this technology to other areas.

Proven solutions like AI-based conversation intelligence analyse 100% of omnichannel customer interactions, instead of the fraction of contacts that can be analysed manually. Starting small with a use case, such as QA, is a great path to unlocking immediate value.

The power of conversation intelligence

Integrating both solicited and unsolicited feedback — and analysing it at scale — is key to truly understanding the voice of the customer. Starting with targeted applications like QA and gradually expanding the use of conversation intelligence can reveal profound insights, leading to cross-departmental improvements and unexpected business outcomes.

Navigating the complexities of customer feedback in today’s data-saturated world isn’t easy. By focusing on unsolicited feedback and leveraging the right workflows, you can unlock deeper insights that drive meaningful, measurable change across the organisation.