REFINING A UTILITIES’ VOICE
OF THE CUSTOMER (VOC)
PROGRAM APPROACH USING
THE LADDER OF INFERENCE
by Torin Lacher with contributions from Paul Hagen
A WEST MONROE WHITE PAPER
REFINING A UTILITIES’ VOC PROGRAM BY
USING THE LADDER OF INFERENCE
A recent Energy & Utilities newsletter article, discussed how utilities
could utilize Voice of the Customer (VoC) Programs to start listening
to their customers and taking action by altering business decisions
based on customer feedback. Oftentimes, organizations believe that
they have a strong VoC program just because they collect customer
feedback, but they are just scratching the surface. A truly strong VoC
program is not one that only captures customer feedback, but a
holistic program that listens to customers, analyzes and organizes the
feedback you receive, communicates that feedback to relevant staff
members, and then turns insights into action to improve key business
processes. A strong VoC program can bring transformational change
to your organization by enabling customer insights to be turned into
actionable improvements and will evolve over time to adapt to your
current customer base and business model.
A WEST MONROE WHITE PAPER
REFINING A UTILITIES’ VOC PROGRAM BY
USING THE LADDER OF INFERENCE
In this article, we will talk about a 4-step approach that you can use to define and develop a strong VoC
program for your organization and a simple tool you can use to help execute on this approach – The Ladder
of Inference! Throughout the paper we will be tying in examples for how one water Utility we worked with
developed their VoC program; utilizing the results to improve upon their customer experience and build
engagement. At the end, there will be a detailed case study around how this Utility developed and utilized
the results from their VoC program.
OUR 4-STEP APPROACH
West Monroe Partners utilizes a 4-step approach to developing and defining the capabilities of a nextgeneration VoC Program: Listen, Analyze, Report, and Act (shown and defined below). These 4-steps
describe the process and strategy to developing your VoC program to gather data-driven actionable insights
out of customer feedback. At a high level, this may seem like common sense, but when looking into their
own VoC program many organizations find that they are lacking in, or entirely missing, one or more of these
steps. There are many tools that you could use to help your organization review and enhance your
capabilities in each of these four areas. I am going to describe one tool that I have found to be extremely
effective in doing just that – The Ladder of Inference.
The Ladder of Inference
The Ladder of Inference is a powerful tool that helps avoid drawing incorrect or incomplete conclusions.
When used in a social context, the Ladder of Inference helps individuals overcome drawing these
incomplete or incorrect conclusions by setting up a framework of seven sequential rungs used to reflect on
A WEST MONROE WHITE PAPER
REFINING A UTILITIES’ VOC PROGRAM BY
USING THE LADDER OF INFERENCE
your own thinking, make your reasoning more visible to others, and inquire into your peers reasoning and
thinking patterns. If you’re like me, I thought the Ladder of Inference was a wonderful concept, but could
not think of a real-world application where I could use it effectively. I mean, how many people are going to
remember and walk through the seven different rungs when they are having a heated disagreement with
someone at work on a project they are passionate about? I definitely know that would not be me. However,
after putting in a little more thought on how to use the Ladder of Inference, I realized that this tool was
extremely applicable and valuable to conceptualizing and building a VoC program utilizing the 4-step
approach described above.
Oftentimes employees at an organization tend to draw their own conclusions about what they believe their
customers want without completely understanding the customer’s thought process and experience. Like the
Ladder of Inference, a VoC Program helps bridge this gap of an organization jumping to conclusions by
allowing them to gather, analyze, report, and take action based on their customer’s feedback. This makes
the Ladder of Inference the perfect tool to utilize to help build out a VoC program. An example of the Ladder
of Inference tool in a VoC context is illustrated below:
1
Applying the Ladder of Inference to your VoC Program Approach
Throughout the remainder of this article, we will show you how your organization can build out each phase
of our 4-step VoC Program approach (Listen, Analyze, Report, and Act) by applying and walking through
each rung on the Ladder of Inference. As we describe each of the rungs on the Ladder of Inference, we will
1
Source: The Fifth Discipline by Peter Senge
A WEST MONROE WHITE PAPER
REFINING A UTILITIES’ VOC PROGRAM BY
USING THE LADDER OF INFERENCE
also provide real-world examples for how the water Utility we worked with conducted activities within each
of these areas when establishing their VoC program.
The LISTEN Step
The First Rung: Observable Data and Experiences
The “Observable Data and Experiences” rung of the Ladder represents all of the possible interactions a
customer can have with your Utility. This could be through various meter-to-cash functions (e.g. contact
center, field service staff, on-site payments), social media, or community campaigns. Customers interact
with your Utility across many different channels and their interactions sometimes go unrecognized. All of
these possible experiences and touchpoints that customers have with your Utility provide an opportunity
for your organization to gather feedback.
Real-world example: The water Utility we worked with interacted with customers in many ways; public
website and payment portal, social media, call center, service appointments, and community events just to
name a few. These all presented opportunities for the Utility to gather information on how their customers
felt during each of these interactions.
The Second Rung: “I select data from what I observe”
This rung of the Ladder represents the customer feedback that you choose to collect. This is where your VoC
program comes in! Now that your organization understands all of the possible customer interaction points
from the “Observable Data and Experiences” step, the key is determining which interactions you want to get
feedback on and measure. If you are at a Utility that is receiving many complaints about your field service
staff missing appointment windows, you may gather feedback from all customers who have service
appointments. Your organization can understand the channels and receive feedback on them. Start by
choosing an area where you believe your organization could improve and then build upon it.
Real-world example: The water Utility wanted to gather customer feedback related to their call center,
online website and payment portal, and service request customer interactions; activities that made up the
majority of their customer interactions. In order to gather feedback across these key customer interaction
area, the Utility developed surveys to be delivered across six different customer touchpoints;
 Customer payment portal
 Public website
 Interactive voice response (IVR)
 Meter field service appointments
 Phone interactions with a customer service representative (CSR)
 Face-to-face interaction with a CSR in the Utility’s lobby
A WEST MONROE WHITE PAPER
REFINING A UTILITIES’ VOC PROGRAM BY
USING THE LADDER OF INFERENCE
The ANALYZE Step
The Third Rung: “I add meanings”
Now that your organization’s Voice of the Customer program has the data (customer feedback) you have
selected, you will need to interpret (or add meanings) to the feedback you’ve received. This analysis could
be through tracking or reporting tools that allow you to view all of the feedback you are receiving in one
location, so that you can track trends over time. For example, the VOC team can add meaning to data by
spotting a rapidly ’trending issue’ and flag it for urgent analysis and attention. If your Utility updates its
website and notices a rapidly trending issue around customers not being able to log in, the VoC team can
send this information to IT for urgent analysis and troubleshooting. Adding meaning also could apply to text
analysis, allowing you to search for topics and emotions consistently conveyed within your results. By
adding meaning around your feedback, you enable the organization to holistically review and see trending
results over time – increasing the amount of impact the results can make.
Real-world example: The Utility we worked with decided to select a VoC vendor to help them gather
feedback through surveys so that they could add meaning to the feedback they received across the six
customer interaction points listed above. These surveys are distributed to customers who interacted with
the Utility across at least one of the touchpoints the prior day and were custom to the type of interaction
the customer had. After gathering the survey feedback, the vendor worked with the Utility to develop
reporting dashboards that aggregated and visualized all of their survey feedback (across each touchpoint) in
one central location. The dashboards helped show trends in feedback over time and provided a method for
the Utility to see the customer experience they were providing in each individual touchpoint. Each survey
also had an open-ended question that allowed customers to provide free-form feedback outside of the set
question list. Incorporating comments into the dashboards allowed members of the Utility to review
qualitative feedback as well; oftentimes validating the trending feedback results they were seeing and
providing specific improvement opportunities.
The Fourth Rung: “I make assumptions based on the meanings I added”
Now that you’ve interpreted your customer feedback and established a VoC program that can analyze data,
you will need to make assumptions based on the feedback you are receiving. This step of a VoC program is
often difficult because there is such a large amount of feedback, how do you know what assumptions will be
truly valuable? Before getting the data, you most likely will have some idea for the pain points in your
organization. The data from your VoC program will help validate these assumptions or provide insight into
another problem you may have been overlooking. Once receiving feedback, engage business analysts within
your VoC team to review the data and look for the root cause to customer responses. Through conducting
this root cause analysis, your organization will not be reacting to “symptoms” (pain points) that come out in
customer feedback, but will be able to point out the responsible department across the company that can
take action to improve the customer experience for this issue within all future interactions. In addition,
A WEST MONROE WHITE PAPER
REFINING A UTILITIES’ VOC PROGRAM BY
USING THE LADDER OF INFERENCE
having a VoC team of individuals analyzing and reviewing customer feedback will allow each person to
create their own assumptions that they can then raise to the rest of the VoC team.
Real-world example: Now that the water Utility had reports to aggregate and visualize the data, they
developed a VoC team of individuals across the key business areas soliciting customer feedback
(communications, field services, and communications). Members of the team were responsible for
reviewing the feedback associated with their interaction channels on a monthly basis. Then the team would
meet each month to discuss the results across all customer feedback channels to determine if they could
find the root cause for why they were seeing negative or positive results based on the month prior.
Conducting this analysis with each of the key business areas represented allowed the VoC team to come up
with solutions across the entire business, rather than just their individual department.
The Fifth Rung: “I draw conclusions”
Now that you and your VoC team have made assumptions based on your initial analysis of the results, you
will need to draw conclusions based on these assumptions. Based on the results and your root cause
analysis, you will begin to recognize trends in customer feedback and develop a more detailed
understanding for key areas of improvement. However, having these key areas of improvements identified
still does not allow your organization to take action upon them. Your VoC team, working alongside impacted
business areas for key improvements, should develop an ROI analysis that considers in part the importance
for the customers and in part on the business impact (e.g. Cost/effort to fix; expected cost savings; possible
revenue gains) to prioritize what improvements will be most impactful. Your ROI analysis and trending
results will allow you to draw conclusions and prioritize projects affecting the most important changes to
your customers and/or business.
Real-world example: The improvement opportunities identified and discussed within the Utility’s monthly
VoC team meetings would then go into a list of potential improvement projects. Each project in this list was
analyzed to determine the benefit on customers, how many customers would be impacted, the positive or
negative impact on current performance metrics, how much effort it would take to complete the project,
and any cross-impacts this project may have on other business areas. Conducting this analysis enabled the
Utility to prioritize the projects that would be most beneficial to their organization and customers having a
VoC team of individuals analyzing and reviewing customer feedback will allow each person to create their
own assumptions that they can then raise to the rest of the VoC team.
The Sixth Rung: “I adopt beliefs about this world”
Taking your conclusions one-step further, your organization adopts beliefs about your customer’s interests
on a broader scale based on the conclusions you’ve developed. This rung will help the organization
understand the trends of what are the most important interactions that customers are having and where
potential pain points lie throughout the organization. By adopting beliefs about your customer base on a
A WEST MONROE WHITE PAPER
REFINING A UTILITIES’ VOC PROGRAM BY
USING THE LADDER OF INFERENCE
broader scale, you will be able to look for improvement opportunities across all business areas rather than
just the ones where you have received feedback. For example, if customers are saying they would like more
self-service options for updating billing information within their customer portal, the customer base as a
whole may be looking for more self-service options across the business (IVR, online service requests, mobile
notifications).
After analyzing the customer feedback, the water Utility realized that it was extremely important that
customers have a good experience when making a payment, which consisted of a large majority of their
customer interactions. Customers consistently provided feedback on how to make the payment process
easier and wanted to increase the amount of channels available to make payments. The Utility realized that
making improvements in this area would positively affect the customer experience for a majority of their
customers, so they adopted the belief that increasing the amount of self-service options and improving the
ease of making payments across all touchpoints would yield the most beneficial customer experience
feedback results. Also, through increasing the amount of self-service payment options, the Utility hoped to
have the added benefit of reducing the amount of calls they received in their call center.
The REPORT and ACT Steps
The Seventh Rung: “I take actions based on my beliefs”
This step creates positive change within your organization. Without taking action on the feedback you’ve
received, the feedback will go to waste, resulting in no organizational change. In order to inspire actions
within your organization, report and communicate VoC results to the appropriate staff members to institute
change. Through reporting this information outwards towards fellow staff members, it will allow these staff
to gain insight into how they can best address improvement opportunities their customers have brought up
in feedback. Staff members can use these results to develop new projects (i.e. help develop requirements
for a new IVR system), enhance current solutions (i.e. allowing customers to save their payment information
within the current billing portal), or drive business process improvements (i.e. flexible hours for field service
appointments). These areas of improvement and suggestions will be prioritized as future projects – knowing
that they will have a positive impact on a large segment of your customer base.
The water Utility was upgrading their customer payment portal after launching their VoC program. Since
they were already obtaining data on their customer portal through their VoC program, many of the design
and functional elements customers identified as improvement opportunities were taken into account when
developing the new portal’s requirements. This included saving payment preferences and options when
making regular monthly payments, providing a mobile app that offering customers an additional way to
make their payment, and adding payment arrangement options. The Utility is continuously monitoring their
customer feedback across all channels and meet on a monthly basis to compare feedback, spot trends, and
identify improvement projects and areas based on the results.
A WEST MONROE WHITE PAPER
REFINING A UTILITIES’ VOC PROGRAM BY
USING THE LADDER OF INFERENCE
Tying all of the rungs together: “The Reflexive Loop”
The reflexive loop is not a step on the ladder, but is rather the understanding that your VoC program will
constantly be evolving. As customer feedback changes over time, a successful VoC program will adapt to
these changes to solicit feedback from customers through different channels (e.g. social media or mobile
apps) or interaction points (e.g. start surveying your own employees or sending out surveys on a newly
launched website). This is an important concept to tie the entire Ladder of Inference tool together, because
if your organization is not updating their VoC program to get feedback on the most critical business
processes, your program will become less effective towards addressing the most pressing customer issues.
Regularly review the feedback you are soliciting and constantly keep an open mind to how your program
can improve to reach more customers or solicit feedback that is more useful.
Now that you have an understanding on how to use the Ladder of Inference to develop a VoC program that
can bring real change to your Utility – go give it a try on your VoC program and see if there are any steps in
the process that you could improve upon! Below, we have included the detailed case study on how the
water Utility mentioned throughout the examples above developed and utilized their VoC program
feedback.
A Utility’s VoC Program in Action: Decreased Customer Effort Leads to Increased
Customer Satisfaction
Recently, West Monroe had the opportunity to work with a large municipal water utility to develop their
VoC program. This Utility serves over 170,000 residential and commercial customers and developed a VoC
program as part of a multi-year customer experience transformational program focusing on improving
customers’ interactions with their contact center, field services, and automated systems. The Utility applied
customer feedback from their VoC results to improve upon their customer experience and increase
customer engagement.
Prior to this initiative, the Utility distributed customer feedback surveys through two channels: quarterly
surveys sent to 400 randomly chosen customers and comment cards distributed to customers who
contacted the Utility via the city’s 311 program. There were a few primary issues with only gathering
customer feedback through these channels, including:



the Utility was uncertain if these customers actually interacted with them over the specified
timeframe,
they could not pinpoint the exact interaction the customer was referring to,
and the feedback may not be fresh in the minds of customers.
A WEST MONROE WHITE PAPER
REFINING A UTILITIES’ VOC PROGRAM BY
USING THE LADDER OF INFERENCE
In order to address these problems, the Utility wanted to develop a VoC program that allowed them to
gather a large amount of actionable feedback from their customers. In order to do this, West Monroe
worked with the Utility to develop customer surveys across five unique channels: public website and portal
(online systems), IVR (contact center), live agent calls (contact center), lobby (walk-ins), and field services
(scheduled appointments).
West Monroe worked with the Utility and the VoC vendor they decided to use to develop and execute on a
VoC strategy and survey tool implementation. Specifically, we collaborated with the Utility to develop
survey questions for each interaction type, identify the data needed in order to distribute the surveys, and
create meaningful reports to aggregate and visualize feedback results. Many of the survey questions related
to customer effort and satisfaction related to the interaction and included an open-ended question for
customers to provide feedback outside of what the questions could capture. Since implementing the
surveys (online systems in August 2014 and the contact center, walk-ins, and scheduled appointments in
April 2015), there have been over 19,000 responses from customers across all five channels!
After aggregating the data and having their VoC team review the feedback, the Utility identified key trends
in the feedback that they could use to drive design decisions for their public website, customer portal and
the mobile app. This feedback included customers wanting an increased amount of self-service options
when making a payment, reducing the number of clicks needed to get to the payment page, and compared
the water utility experience to similar customer experiences with other local utilities. Using this feedback,
the Utility was able address these common themes by updating their website and portal design to reflect
the requested changes; turning the insights into actionable improvements. In addition to these
improvement opportunities, there was a very clear picture across all interaction points – decreased
customer effort led to an increased customer satisfaction!
In order to provide quantitative evidence that decreased customer effort led to an increased customer
experience, we were able to take the feedback from the 19,000 surveys that were completed and plot
customer satisfaction and effort scores. The correlation coefficient measures the strength of a relationship
between two data sets and the values range from -1 (perfect negative relationship) to +1 (perfect positive
relationship). In our scenario outlined below, we are measuring the relationship between decreased
customer effort and increased customer satisfaction, so a correlation coefficient closer to one shows how
strong the relationship is – affirming that decreased customer effort leads to a higher customer satisfaction.
For reference, below is a table that shows the range of positive correlation coefficient values and their
representative relationship strength between the two variables:
A WEST MONROE WHITE PAPER
REFINING A UTILITIES’ VOC PROGRAM BY
USING THE LADDER OF INFERENCE
Correlation
Coefficient
Value
Relationship Strength
+0.00 – 0.29
+0.30 – 0.49
+0.50 – 0.69
+0.70 – 0.99
+1.00
No relationship between decreased customer effort and
increased customer satisfaction
A weak positive relationship between decreased customer
effort and increased customer satisfaction
A moderate positive relationship between decreased
customer effort and increased customer satisfaction
A strong positive relationship between decreased customer
effort and increased customer satisfaction
A perfect positive relationship between decreased customer
effort and increased customer satisfaction
Utilizing the VoC data across each of the Utility’s measured touch points, we charted the customer effort
and satisfaction survey response trending scores for each month since implementing the survey tools. We
then calculated the correlation coefficient using the monthly customer effort and satisfaction scores, where
the scores ranged from low (1) to high (5). The graphs and correlation coefficient values for each touch point
is illustrated in the figure below:
Each VoC channel’s correlation
coefficient shows an extremely
strong positive relationship
between reduced customer
effort & increased customer
satisfaction!
Correlation
Coefficient
IVR
LIVE AGENT
LOBBY
MFS
ONLINE
OVERALL
0.666
0.854
0.851
0.819
0.986
0.961
A WEST MONROE WHITE PAPER
REFINING A UTILITIES’ VOC PROGRAM BY
USING THE LADDER OF INFERENCE
Since the correlation coefficient between decreased customer effort and increased customer satisfaction for
each of the five interaction channels was around or above +0.7, we could conclude that there is a strong
positive relationship between decreased customer effort and increased customer satisfaction! This was an
extremely important finding for the Utility because it proved that if they made business decisions and
improvements to decrease their customer’s effort, they would most likely achieve increased customer
satisfaction and engagement.
This was just one way that this water utility used their VoC data to gather customer insights and drive
business improvements, there are many other ways that your Utility can tailor a VoC program to meet your
organizational goals and needs!
If you have any additional questions about VoC programs, please reach out to Torin Lacher, Experienced
Consultant at [email protected] or Paul Hagen, Sr. Principal at
[email protected].