Speak to anyone in customer experience, research, or marketing, and they’ll tell you that the old model of one-way customer communication is outdated. Today’s market leaders need—and many are already relying on—strategies to engage more effectively with their audiences in a two-way dialogue.
Are you able to understand what your customers are telling you? Can you use these customer insights to improve their experiences and deliver what they really want?
If not, that’s where the latest AI-driven Voice of the Customer software and tools can help.
In this post, we’ll look at what these tools can help, how they do it—and, perhaps most importantly—which are the best VoC platforms out there for teams to use in 2025.
Table of Contents
What is the Voice of the Customer (VoC)?
The Voice of the Customer (VoC) represents the process of capturing and understanding the needs, expectations, and experiences of your customers. It goes beyond simply collecting feedback; it’s about actively listening to customer sentiment across all touchpoints. In today’s digital landscape, this involves gathering data from diverse sources like surveys, social media, online reviews and, crucially, contact center interactions.
Voice of Customer tools, then, are the sophisticated systems and software designed specifically to drive VoC programs—capturing, analyzing, and enabling action based on the intelligence that can be found in different forms of customer feedback. Growing in tandem along with the latest AI innovations busy transforming the role and capabilities of the modern contact center, today’s VoC tools play a key part in shaping the future of customer experience, marketing, and beyond.
In fact, research has found that:
- Companies with an active VoC program spend 25% less on customer retention
- Companies with mature VoC programs also drive higher employee engagement and lower customer service costs
Discover top Voice of the Customer best practices to improve your VoC program.
Types of VoC Tools
Voice of the Customer tools can, broadly speaking, be categorized into three main types, each serving a distinct purpose in capturing and analyzing customer feedback:
Reporting and analytics tools
These tools are designed to extract meaningful insights from customer interactions. They encompass a range of functionalities, including interaction analytics, which analyzes conversations across various channels (phone, chat, email) to identify trends and patterns.
Conversation analytics solutions delve deeper into the content of these interactions, revealing customer sentiment and key topics of discussion. Often integrated within these platforms are speech analytics tools, which transcribe and analyze voice interactions, and sentiment analysis tools, which determine the emotional tone of customer feedback. These tools are crucial for understanding the “why” behind customer behavior and identifying areas for process improvement.
Customer feedback management and automation tools
This category includes tools that streamline the collection and management of customer feedback.
Survey tools, for instance, enable businesses to gather structured data through questionnaires, measuring metrics like NPS, CSAT, and CES.
Social listening tools, on the other hand, monitor social media platforms and online forums to capture unstructured feedback and brand mentions. These tools often include automation features, such as automated survey distribution and real-time alerts for negative sentiment, allowing for timely responses and proactive customer engagement.
Customer journey mapping tools
These tools focus on visualizing and analyzing the customer journey across various touchpoints. They help businesses understand how customers interact with their brand at each stage, from initial awareness to post-purchase support. By mapping the customer journey, organizations can identify friction points, optimize customer experiences, and personalize interactions.
These tools often integrate with other VoC solutions to provide a comprehensive view of customer interactions and feedback throughout the entire customer lifecycle.
How Voice of the Customer Tools Work
Ultimately, while specialized VoC solutions exist within each of these categories, many solutions offer a distinct blend of all three. And as we explore below, most VoC software generally functions according to the same process.
VoC tools typically perform three primary actions:
1. Collecting Customer Data
VoC tools streamline the process of gathering and analyzing customer data, compared to traditional methods. They capture insights from a range of sources, whether direct surveys, customer interviews, social media comments, or support interaction notes, covering all touchpoints and sources more efficiently. In fact, Gartner forecasts that by 2025, 60% of organizations using VoC tools will analyze voice and text interactions to supplement traditional customer surveys.
Types of Voice of the Customer Data
- Direct Feedback: This includes data gathered directly from customers through surveys (NPS, CSAT, CES), feedback forms, interviews, and focus groups. It provides explicit insights into customer opinions and experiences.
- Indirect Feedback: This encompasses data generated from customer interactions, such as contact center transcripts, chat logs, email correspondence, social media mentions, and website analytics. In the contact center, this can also include quality assurance scores and other agent performance insights. It offers implicit insights into customer behavior and sentiment.
- Inferred Feedback: This involves analyzing customer behavior patterns and interactions to infer their needs and preferences. Examples include contact center performance data (call volume, wait times, etc.), customer journey analysis, purchase history, and product usage data.
2. Analyzing Data
Once data is collected, VoC solutions employ advanced analytics to sift through this information. With the help of analytics tools such as sentiment analysis and natural language processing, VoC software detects patterns and trends in customer behavior and opinions. This step is crucial for understanding what customers are doing or saying and why they’re doing it.
3. Generating Actionable Insight
The real power of VoC tools lies in their ability to turn raw data and analysis into targeted, strategic action. By synthesizing interaction data into clear, actionable insights, these solutions pinpoint specific areas for improvement within contact center operations.
Whether it’s identifying the most frequently recurring customer pain points within interaction transcripts, highlighting agent performance gaps through quality monitoring, revealing trends in customer sentiment via real-time analytics dashboards, or supporting marketing and sales efforts by surfacing attribution and campaign insights, AI-powered VoC analytics guides business and contact center decision-makers toward data-driven improvement strategies to enhance agent training, optimize support processes, and ultimately, elevate customer satisfaction.
10 of the Best Voice of the Customer Tools for 2025
Adopting the right VoC software can have a massive impact on your operation’s ability to answer customer concerns and exceed their evolving expectations. This section highlights 10 top solutions of various types, focusing on key features that empower teams to act on customer insights.
1. Calabrio ONE
Calabrio ONE provides contact centers with a unified workforce engagement and customer experience intelligence platform, including robust VoC analytics software capabilities. Calabrio solutions excel in capturing and analyzing customer interactions across channels, accelerating root cause analysis and uncovering the insights that fuel smarter strategies and improved customer satisfaction. Plus, the Calabrio ONE suite empowers organizations with leading workforce management tools that drive more efficient scheduling and planning and support more engaged agents on the frontlines of the customer experience.
Key Features:
- AI-powered omnichannel interaction analytics deliver a single source of truth for CX and contact center performance data.
- Sentiment analysis, speech and text analytics uncover actionable VoC insights buried within thousands of conversations.
- Trending Topics feature leverages AI to automatically generate prioritized list of most common conversation topics and concerns.
- Evaluate 100% of interactions with automated quality management tools.
- Empower teams with intuitive dashboards, reporting, and BI tools.
- Translate insights into more effective agent coaching and training.
- Leading contact center WFM software: Efficiently meet demand with advanced forecasting and scheduling tools, plus drive agent engagement and retention.
2. Medallia
Medallia is a leading experience management platform for enterprises, designed to capture and analyze customer feedback across numerous touchpoints. Medallia offers robust feedback collection capabilities across a range of sources, including web-based, email, and phone survey, as well as social media mentions and third-party review platforms. Smaller organizations may find Medallia’s enterprise-focused solutions to be too resource-intensive to maintain, while contact centers may find more utility in solutions tailored to the needs of their workforce and customers.
Key Features:
- Comprehensive omnichannel feedback collection, emphasizing digital experience.
- Advanced text analytics with robust NLP for in-depth sentiment analysis.
- Predictive analytics to anticipate customer churn and needs.
- Detailed customer journey mapping across diverse touchpoints.
- Role-based dashboards and action management for enterprise-wide visibility.
3. Qualtrics XM
Qualtrics is another leading experience management platform that offers a broad range of VoC tools, including AI-powered survey software and digital experience analytics tools. Qualtrics XM’s CX-related capabilities extend from areas like website and app feedback to strategic market and product research services. As with Medallia, Qualtrics offers a broad base of powerful solutions, which contact centers with specific needs may find overwhelming or potentially irrelevant to their use cases.
Key Features:
- AI-powered survey design with advanced logic and personalization.
- Real-time feedback analysis with statistical modeling for actionable insights.
- Online reputation management solutions.
- Location-level in-store experience insights via Qualtrics Location Experience Hub.
- Employee listening, analytics, and experience management tools.
4. NICE
NICE is a major player in the CCaaS space, offering a varied portfolio of distinct contact center solutions. This includes a range of VOC capabilities, including customer feedback and survey management, real-time guidance tools, agent behavioral analysis.
Key Features:
- Real-time interaction analytics for voice and digital channels.
- AI-driven sentiment and topic discovery within contact center interactions.
- Quality management and performance optimization tools.
- Automation and workflow management tailored for contact center operations.
- Real-time customer feedback tools.
5. Verint
Verint’s Open Platform offers a broad array of solutions for enterprises, including a CCaaS platform, contact center automation solutions, and VoC tools. Verint Voice of the Customer software offers capabilities such as customer feedback collection and management for website, mobile app, and store, as well as survey management and digital listening tools. Although Verint is an industry leader, some users may find their reporting tools difficult to use, and others have reported lackluster support services.
Key Features:
- Omnichannel interaction recording and analysis with quality monitoring.
- Speech and text analytics for detailed interaction insights.
- Customer journey mapping with a focus on optimizing engagement.
- Agent coaching and performance management tools.
- Real-time alerts and AI-driven workflow automation options.
6. SentiSum
SentiSum offers an AI-powered customer experience analytics platform, with distinct offerings in support ticket analytics, customer feedback analytics, as well as customer review monitoring. These solutions evidence SentiSum’s leading specialization, however, contact centers may find that they have limited functionality outside of ticket and review analysis.
Key Features:
- AI-powered ticket categorization and analysis for support optimization.
- Real-time issue detection and alerts for proactive support.
- Root cause analysis and trend identification for support process improvement.
- Seamless integration with helpdesk platforms.
- Specific tools for customer review monitoring.
7. SurveyMonkey
SurveyMonkey is one of the top providers of survey management, forms, and market research solutions, offering survey creation, sentiment analysis, and CSAT-related tools, among others, that are built to integrate with an array of other common enterprise applications, from payment platforms to unified comms. While powerful for a number of VoC use cases, SurveyMonkey lacks the deep interaction analytics that can be found in specialized contact center VoC tools.
Key Features:
- Versatile survey creation and distribution for various feedback needs.
- Sentiment analysis and CSAT-related tools integrated with survey data.
- Integration with numerous enterprise applications for streamlined workflows.
- Strong market research capabilities.
- Easy-to-use interface.
8. InMoment
InMoment is an established CX management solution provider offering an experience improvement (XI) platform that combines survey feedback, social listening, and other data sources to provide actionable insights for businesses in one place.
Key Features:
- Unified experience improvement (XI) platform for holistic CX management.
- Customer journey mapping and optimization with role-based dashboards.
- Text and sentiment analysis across diverse feedback sources.
- Action planning and case management for closed-loop feedback.
- Strong tools for social media monitoring.
9. HubSpot
HubSpot is a leading customer relationship management (CRM) provider. Their CRM platform includes built-in Voice of the Customer software options, such as survey management and reporting tools, as well as speech and text analytics solutions, all of which integrate with the sales and marketing automation offerings they’re best known for.
Key Features:
- Customer feedback surveys (NPS, CSAT, etc.).
- CRM integration for customer data management.
- Email marketing and automation.
- Reporting and analytics dashboards.
- Customer support ticketing.
- Forms and landing page creation.
10. CallMiner Eureka
CallMiner Eureka is a customer interaction analytics platform that provides deep insights into customer interactions, with a particular focus on solutions used for analyzing and improving contact center experiences. However, its prowess in analyzing voice interactions may not be equaled across the array of other channels that many contact centers interact with today’s customers in.
Key Features:
- Advanced speech analytics with real-time call monitoring and alerts.
- Sentiment and topic discovery within voice interactions.
- Agent performance evaluation and compliance monitoring.
- Customer interaction scoring for quality assurance.
- Strong history in analyzing voice interactions.
Choosing the Right VoC Software for Your Needs
This list of leading VoC tools will help inform your search for better customer insights. Ultimately, though, selecting the ideal is a critical decision that depends on your organization’s particular needs. Here’s a breakdown of key factors to consider:
1. Define Your Objectives and Use Cases:
- What are you trying to achieve? Are you primarily focused on improving customer satisfaction, reducing churn, enhancing product development, or optimizing marketing campaigns?
- What channels do you need to monitor? Do you need to capture feedback from surveys, social media, phone calls, live chat, or a combination of these?
- Who will be using the software? Consider the needs of contact center decision-makers, other customer service teams, marketing departments, product managers, and executives.
2. Evaluate Key Features and Functionality:
- Analytics and Reporting: Look for robust analytics capabilities, including sentiment analysis, trend identification, and customizable dashboards.
- Integration: Verify that the software integrates seamlessly with your existing CRM, helpdesk, and other business systems.
- Automation: Explore features like automated alerts, workflows, and action triggers to streamline processes.
- Scalability: Consider whether the software can handle your growing data volume and user base.
- AI and Machine Learning: Evaluate the software’s ability to leverage AI for advanced insights and predictive analytics.
- Speech Analytics: If you handle many voice interactions, consider solutions with advanced speech-to-text and analysis capabilities.
- Text Analytics: Ensure the software can accurately analyze unstructured text data from surveys, reviews, and social media.
Optional features:
- Customer Journey Mapping: Consider whether your VoC tools need to enable you to visualize and understand the customer journey across touchpoints. These features may go unused by contact center teams in particular; also, specialty CX journey mapping tools are available.
- Feedback Collection: If you will rely on VoC software tools for direct customer feedback from surveys, compare functionality of related features. For many contact center teams, basic post-interaction survey capabilities will suffice.
3. Consider User Experience and Ease of Use:
- Intuitive Interface: Choose software that is easy to navigate and use for all team members.
- Training and Support: Evaluate the vendor’s training resources and customer support offerings.
- Mobile Accessibility: If required, ensure the software is accessible on mobile devices for on-the-go feedback analysis.
4. Assess Security and Compliance:
- Data Security: Verify that the software meets industry security standards and protects sensitive customer data.
- Compliance: Ensure the software complies with relevant regulations, such as GDPR and CCPA.
5. Evaluate Vendor Reputation and Support:
- Vendor Experience: Consider the vendor’s track record and industry expertise.
- Customer Reviews: Read reviews and testimonials from other customers.
6. Determine Budget and ROI:
- Pricing Model: Understand the software’s pricing structure and consider your budget.
- Return on Investment (ROI): Use available ROI and savings calculators to evaluate the potential return offered by the software in terms of improved customer satisfaction, reduced churn, and increased revenue. Otherwise, average time to ROI statistics are frequently offered within prominent industry reports.
7. Request a Demo and Trial:
- Hands-on Experience: Request a demo or trial to test the software’s features and functionality.
- Ask Questions: Don’t hesitate to ask the vendor questions about their software and the support you can expect before, during, and after implementation.
By carefully considering these factors, you can select a VOC software solution that aligns with your business needs and empowers you to create exceptional customer experiences.
Why Calabrio ONE Stands Out in a Crowded VoC Tools Landscape
Today’s business leaders are looking to their contact centers to deliver elevated customer engagement—as well as drive value across the business. With one fully integrated suite of solutions, Calabrio ONE equips contact centers with not only the VoC analytics tools they need to discover deep customer insights and translate them into impact, but also comprehensive workforce engagement management software that provides a holistic view of customer interactions and contact center activity.
With Calabrio ONE, contact centers can connect agent performance with customer satisfaction, a crucial link too often overlooked by other VoC solutions. Capture interaction data across all contact center channels, leverage AI-powered interaction analytics, and uncover actionable VoC and quality assurance insights that fuel better sales and marketing strategies, more effective coaching, and drive lasting customer relationships.
Ready to harness the true voice of your customer, and empower your agents to deliver exceptional experiences? Build a customer-centric culture at your contact center with the help of Calabrio—and start by booking a free demo today.
