Your customers are already telling you what’s broken, what’s missing, and why they’re leaving. They do it in reviews, ratings, support tickets, social comments, and return reasons. Most brands collect this data, but only a very few do anything useful with it. In fact, 95% brands still struggle with this unstructured data.
E-commerce data analytics platforms help turn that noise into decisions. It enables you to spot product issues before returns spike, understand why conversion drops on a specific SKU, and fix experience gaps that no revenue report will ever show you. When done right, it connects customer sentiment directly to sales, retention, and category growth.
This guide breaks down what Voice of the Customer data really is in an e-commerce context, how to analyze it at scale, and how brands use it to improve products, pricing, listings, and the digital shelf.
What is Voice of the Customer (VoC)?
The voice of the customer is the systematic method businesses use to gather user feedback to understand customer perception about their products better.
In an e-commerce context, VoC data is collected from live chat with a customer service executive, a bot, or user reviews and ratings posted publicly by customers.
Methods to Collect Voice of Customer Data
By capturing VoC, brands can address customer pain points at every touchpoint in the customer journey. Some methods to collect voice of the customer data are:
Online Product Ratings and Reviews
In the online shopping scenario, customers directly express their satisfaction or dissatisfaction about the products they purchase by posting ratings and reviews publicly. This has led to a growing importance of ratings and review monitoring.
Customer Satisfaction Surveys
Sellers and brands engage with customers post-purchase to understand how satisfied the customer is with the product. Usually, sellers request customers to fill out a feedback form or ask them to write a review about a product that they recently purchased from a marketplace.
Feedback Form on Website
Website visitors can share their feedback with the company at any point in time by filling out the feedback form.
Customer Interviews
To interact on a more personal level, customer interviews are executed in person, on the phone, or through email during the pre-launch phase to refine the product features or after a promotion to measure its success.
Customer Support Ticket Conversation
Recorded interactions, live chat with a bot or customer executive, give the brand a broader overview of users’ experience and expectations about a product.
Social Media Feedback
Social media allows sellers to have real-time conversations with potential buyers and product users. Product reviews from influencers and vloggers in the form of user-generated content are picking up lately.
Market Research Questionnaires
Certain companies gather the voice of the customer data from focus groups during the pre-launch phase to test new waters.
Companies often gather data from a combination of the above techniques for research. The success of a VoC methodology depends on the product and the target audience it caters. For example, if a brand wants to understand the thought process of Gen Z buyers, they may find a more accurate data set on social media rather than feedback forms.
How Does a Voice of the Customer Analytics Program Work on E-Commerce
When shopping on an e-commerce channel, 85% of consumers trust online reviews just as much as personal recommendations. Trusting these reviews on faith underscores the true power of ratings and reviews.
The Voice of Customer (VoC) analytics program is a step-by-step process. From collecting data to continuous monitoring, there are six steps involved in the process:
Data Collection
The customer decision-making process involves a series of steps, including comparing various alternatives across different channels before buying a product. Brands gather data using various methods across multiple customer touchpoints. Having a clear objective in mind before data collection helps in getting precise results.
The best form of VoC for understanding customer perception in e-commerce is to monitor reviews and ratings.
Data Integration
Google Sheets is the traditional tool used for data visualization. A digital shelf analytics solution provider, such as MetricsCart, makes analyzing facts more appealing on its easy-to-view dashboard. In the following steps, we will explain how MetricsCart helps brands with review monitoring.
Our platform collects data, analyzes it, and generates advanced insights to help organizations understand their customers, anticipate their needs, and enhance their overall experience.
- We aggregate and analyze the customers’ reviews and ratings from all e-commerce platforms and social media channels (YouTube, TikTok, Reddit, etc.).
- We then add contextual information to the data (demographics, promotion period, etc.) to enhance understanding.
Data Analysis
Data analysis is divided into qualitative and quantitative analysis.
Quantitative analysis graphs are prepared by our data analysts to identify trends and patterns.
Here is an example of VoC quantitative analysis created by MetricsCart. Among the brands of video games available at Target, Nintendo is the most popular brand with the most reviews.
Our qualitative text mining analysis:
- Derives recurring themes and sub-themes
- Group problems and sentiments expressed in customer reviews
- Our enhanced customer feedback analysis compares historical data and competitors’ reviews to understand brand popularity in a given category
READ MORE | Want the complete report? Take a look at Digital Shelf Insights: Category Data Analysis on Target
Generate Insights
We analyze customer feedback to surface clear, actionable insights for brands. This includes identifying product features that need improvement and pinpointing recurring customer pain points.
Also, our insights go deeper than individual reviews. We run trend analysis to track sentiment shifts over time, calculate NPS to measure customer loyalty, and enable you to do review-led market research to understand changing consumer expectations and competitive gaps.
The insights are segmented by product, theme, and sentiment, then shared with brands so teams can build targeted, data-backed strategies with confidence.
Monitoring and Analysis
We continuously monitor customer reviews and ratings across e-commerce marketplaces and social media platforms to track how products and brands are performing in real time. This allows you to spot emerging issues early, measure sentiment shifts, and understand what customers are consistently praising or criticizing.
As the analysis breaks feedback down by themes, sentiment, and SKU, it helps you compare performance over time and against competitors. This ensures decisions are based on what shoppers are actually saying, not delayed reports or assumptions.
Advantages of Using Voice of Customer
Among e-commerce companies, Amazon sets a high bar for quality control by applying “Six Sigma” principles to Voice of Customer (VoC) data from reviews and customer service interactions. Most brands sell on Amazon, and those that meet these quality and customer-experience standards consistently rank higher in search results.
Visibility on Amazon is closely tied to customer feedback. Most brands have a presence on Amazon. When sellers align with the marketplace’s robust quality control standards and effectively meet customer expectations, they are bound to rank high on SERPs.
One of the criteria for improving visibility is having a large number of positive reviews. The Amazon Vine program helps brands registered on the marketplace generate early reviews.
Spot Factors that Cause Dissatisfaction in Customers
Positive reviews enhance brand reputation. By addressing the negative reviews early on, brands can increase the number of positive feedback.
Tools like MetricsCart automatically surface recurring issues across reviews, helping brands spot the root causes of negative feedback early. Addressing these issues improves ratings, reduces repeat complaints, and strengthens brand reputation over time.
READ MORE | Curious to know how to create a positive brand image in the mind of consumers? Check out our blog Online Brand Reputation Management: How To Improve Visibility and Ratings
Serves as an Opportunity to Improve the Product and Increase Customer Retention
McDonald’s is an example that uses the voice of the customer effectively. It is the most recognizable brand in the world as it uses geographical segmentation to customize its products, services, and marketing messages to appeal to local tastes and preferences.
With MetricsCart, brands can segment feedback by SKU, market, and theme, making it easier to prioritize fixes that keep customers coming back.
Generates Ideas to Innovate and Meet the Needs and Wants of Customers
For instance, Apple integrates customer feedback into product development to innovate. Nike is yet another brand that collects VoC from various touch points to make improvements in its product line.
In the food and beverage segment, Nestlé measures customer sentiment using analytic tools and gathers meaningful data to improve brand loyalty.
MetricsCart analyzes sentiment, themes, and trends at scale, helping brands turn customer voice into a clear direction for product and experience improvements.
Tracking it All Down
In e-commerce, the voice of the customer is already visible on the digital shelf. Reviews, ratings, and user feedback reveal where products fall short, why conversions drop, and what drives loyalty. The difference between average and high-performing brands is how quickly and accurately they act on these signals.
A structured voice of the customer program turns scattered feedback into measurable inputs for product, marketing, and revenue decisions. With platforms like MetricsCart, brands can monitor reviews at scale, track sentiment and NPS, spot emerging issues early, and connect customer feedback directly to SKU performance.
When customer voice is treated as a live business signal—not a quarterly report—brands improve trust, rankings, and long-term growth.
Get to know the Real Voice of your Customers Across the Digital Shelf.
FAQs
VoC marketing uses customer feedback to shape product messaging, listing content, ad copy, and brand claims. It helps brands align what they say on the digital shelf with what customers actually value.
Common VoC program types include reactive programs (addressing complaints), proactive programs (identifying future risks), and strategic programs (using customer voice to guide product and category decisions).
VoC data should be reviewed continuously for reviews and ratings, and at least weekly for trends and recurring issues. Delayed reviews can lead to lost rankings and conversions.
VoC ownership is shared across product, e-commerce, marketing, and customer experience teams. Centralized dashboards help all teams act on the same customer signals.
