What is Operational / Inferred / Unsolicited Feedback?

Operational, inferred, unstructured and unsolicited feedback are types of customer input that businesses can leverage to develop a more holistic voice of the customer (VOC). They are all similar in that they aren’t given directly to businesses through methods such as surveys or focus groups, but they do vary in several ways.

Unsolicited feedback, also referred to as indirect feedback, is input customers provide about a business, but not to the business. For example, unsolicited feedback can be found in social media posts, product reviews, blog comments, and customer service interactions. Unsolicited feedback can provide more candid insights about customer perceptions, but because the feedback is unstructured, organizations need good tools to capture and analyze it.

Inferred feedback, also called operational feedback, considers customer behavior as well as operational data that impacts their experiences.

For example, customer behavior might include abandoning a call and the associated operational data might include average speed to answer (ASA), overall abandon rates, and volume forecast accuracy. Inferred feedback is particularly valuable because it looks at what customers actually do, rather than what they say. And by looking at the associated operational data, organizations can identify the root causes of customer behavior.

To organize and holistically analyze operational, inferred, unstructured and unsolicited feedback, businesses need sophisticated VOC software capable of social listening and analyzing huge amounts of data from contact center interactions. Such VOC solutions provide the structure and analytical capabilities needed to get the most value out of all types of customer feedback.