In the financial services industry, whether it’s banking, investing, or insurance, customers have opinions.
And in today’s competitive landscape, those opinions can make or break a brand. Voice of Customer (VoC) research helps financial institutions go beyond guessing and listen to what their customers are saying. It’s not just a one-time customer service survey, but a system for regularly capturing, analyzing, and acting on in-depth customer feedback.
In this post, we’ll break down what VoC research is, how it works, and what makes it useful for financial services brands.
Voice of Customer research is the process of collecting and analyzing customer feedback to improve products, services, and experiences. At Drive Research, we treat VoC research as understanding customers and their needs, preferences, and expectations of customers related to your brand (and offerings).
It includes different types of primary data collection (like surveys and interviews) and secondary data (like social media analytics, online reviews, and marketing data).
In financial services, it’s more about who you want to collect data from. Your customers are the obvious answer but what about specific customers like:
Those aren’t always easy to connect with or get valuable feedback from. That’s why VoC seems simple but can be complex in execution. You’ll want the data to be able to help you gain trust with your customers not only for your brand’s presence and identity but also for things like customer loyalty.
Customers typically don’t just want low fees or digital tools from their financial institutions. They want to feel heard and taken care of (like they are in the right hands).
For some hard data, a recent study found that VoC projects and studies can help increase customer retention by 55%+. When you’re looking at keeping churn numbers low, that’s quite a bump up in customer loyalty.
Another recent project found that more and more financial institutions are relying on VoC programs. 43% more financial institutions added their own VoC programs in 2024 meaning to stay ahead or even alongside the competition you’ll need your own VoC projects and data to work with.
Here are some examples of VoC projects and how they help:
| Goal | How VoC Helps | Quick Example |
|---|---|---|
| Review products & services | Spot feature gaps, pricing friction, or onboarding headaches before churn shows up in the metrics. | A SaaS HR platform learned that HR directors were exporting data to Excel for quarterly board reports. They added a one-click board-ready PDF export and cut churn 12%. |
| Identify growth opportunities | Surface unmet needs and “nice-to-have” ideas worth turning into revenue lines. | A specialty chemical supplier discovered clients were buying a competitor’s eco-friendly variant. They fast-tracked an R&D project and won back $8 M in annual contracts. |
| Build customer loyalty | Prioritize high-impact fixes and perks that strengthen relationships beyond the renewal cycle. | An industrial equipment manufacturer introduced a 24-hour spare-parts guarantee after VoC interviews revealed downtime panic. Net Promoter Score jumped 18 points. |
We mentioned that both primary and secondary can be used for VoC and each has its own use and benefit. Typically at Drive Research, we combine both data types to give the best possible data and results (combining them is ideal, although can be difficult).
Primary VoC data comes from surveys, focus groups, and in-depth interviews traditionally. Other types of projects also can be used to collect primary data but these are the most common. Usually it involves a custom audience and a custom project setup to collect primary data which is unique to you and your brand.
Primary data just refers to the fact that the data is unique to your brand and your audience. At Drive Research, we work almost exclusively on primary data projects and help brands collect valuable feedback (because the data can only be used to help you and your needs).
Primary data is typically more valuable than secondary because it helps you answer specific questions or concerns that you’re relying on research to answer. Instead of having to fish through 1000s of generalized reports online to find your answers, primary data can answer them all in one carefully crafted project (as long as you’re working with research experts who have a track record, like ourselves).
Secondary data can still be used for VoC needs but is much more difficult to apply directly. Secondary data can reference social media data, marketing analytics, reviews online, general market research reports, and more related thing. It typically is just not custom tailored to your questions or needs.
So while it can be useful since it generally costs less to collect, it’s much harder and takes much more time to apply to your needs. That’s why most brands that try to use secondary research to answer their questions end up needing primary data anyways.
For general questions or needs secondary data is good at answering. For example if wondering about social media engagement or website retention, you can find those answers in that data you have. For more advanced questions like how do customer feel about [x] product or service and would they pay [x] for it? Secondary data usually falls short in answering those things.
Whether understanding new challenges in a particular market, investigating opinions for a new product/service, or understanding the needs of a certain audience, focus groups are a great way to collect feedback from customers.
Focus groups aim to gather members of your target audience for a group discussion (on a specific topic). This allows customers to bounce ideas off each other, generating fruitful and thoughtful discussions to glean insights from.
In the financial space, recruitment is a constant issue as finding and scheduling a group of business executives or customers can prove to be difficult. This form of research is also prone to groupthink and requires a strong and knowledgeable moderator to guide the discussion in productive and nuanced ways.
Online surveys are a fantastic methodology to hear from a lot of customers.
An customer base or segment can give you their feedback on a new financial service, a panel of small businesses can inform you on their long-term market outlook, or a group of banking experts can advise you on the next generation of financial products.
The scale and reach that online surveys provide are second to none in the research world and typically have faster turnaround times!
Usually customer experience data can be collected from both primary and secondary sources. Both analytics from websites and social media can be used to gather information about general engagement for certain things (as a general overview). While other things like interviews can give more detailed feedback on how customers are experiencing your brand and their in-depth answers on particular subjects.
While great for getting specific information and relatively inexpensive, IDIs lack scale. The 1:1 interview nature makes it logistically difficult to gather many responses.
On the data side, this also makes it more susceptible to bias or individual subjectivity when compared to any other method. That’s why you have to make sure you’re working with experts if you’re considering doing it.
Not to mention but analyzing customer experience data can be complex when multiple data sources are used or collected. You’ll need to work with data analysis experts in market research to make sure the data is being weighted correctly, analyzed sufficiently, and pulled together as insights to properly apply it to business decisions.
Having a VoC program (and especially an ongoing one) to collect data is incredibly important for financial brands. VoC will help you understand your customers and stay ahead of competition. Here are some things to consider for VoC projects and ongoing ones.
Ready to hear exactly what your busiest buyers really think? Drive Research’s full-service VoC team captures and translates those insights into clear, growth-ready action plans.
From recruiting and collecting data to building dashboard-ready analytics, we handle the heavy lifting so you can focus on results.
Reach out today and let’s design a VoC program that speaks your customers’ language and boosts your bottom line.
