Listening to the Voice of Your Customer

The Voice of the Customer (VOC) is a process that ensures the customer's voice is deployed throughout a product's or service's design, production, marketing, delivery, and after-sales service. Listening to the Voice of the Customer and incorporating the customer's input is essential to obtain lifelong customers. The process is best started by bringing together a cross-functional team of managers who spend several days creating a set of matrices linking what internal management believes are customers' wants and needs to a set of product or service matrices which a company can then measure, track and control.

As a result of these meetings, a list of customer needs is organized and prioritized. During this phase, the customers' requirements, warranty data, product measurements, and competitive offerings are assessed alongside the company's technical ability to meet the requirements.

The next phase is led by the product managers/engineering teams. Product concepts are created and specifications drawn with the most important customer needs addressed. In order to organize and evaluate the data, simple tree diagrams are often used.

The next step in the process is critical and often neglected: conducting one-on-one, in-depth interviews with the customers. This technique deploys a structured interview lasting 30 minutes to one hour. The discipline behind the interview is to ensure that all areas in the discussion guide will be addressed without limiting the input from the customer to predetermined formats.

Customers will often organize and prioritize their needs differently than the "insiders." In new product development, it is critical to solicit the Voice of the Customer to correct undesirable feature sets, determine most desirable value propositions, and understand future uses and applications of a new product. This also gives the customer an opportunity to offer innovative product/service ideas into the development process. Not only does this result in new perspectives, it also increases customer satisfaction and loyalty when their ideas are implemented.

Additional research and refinement occurs until the product is launched. Now the Voice of the Customer is needed to assist the company in ensuring it is exceeding customer expectations. Exceeding expectations is extremely challenging as customers continually upgrade their expectations. The involvement in delivering products and services that exceed expectations is the responsibility of everyone in the company.

In an on-going effort to dynamically measure customer commitment and track changes over time, Voice of the Customer tracking research was established. Telephone, mail and web surveys are the typical methods of collecting data from customers. Each of these methods has its advantages and disadvantages, all of which need to be evaluated. Speed, confidentiality and cost are the primary item trade-offs in the decision to use a specific method.

Questions are developed to obtain information on importance and the satisfaction associated with each performance attribute. A ranking model is then developed to help set priorities. Each customer rates a list of key factors in terms of importance when deciding which of the vendors'/
suppliers' products to buy. Second, each customer rates their satisfaction with the company's products and services as well as competitors' products and services on each of the key factors.

Customers are usually guaranteed anonymity when responding to Voice of the Customer studies. Care must be taken in the drafting of the documents since an expectation of follow-up and improvement can be created and any lack of follow-up will increase dissatisfaction. If response rates are not adequate, several procedures can be deployed to increase participation, including offering the customer an incentive for completing the survey.

Some typical questions from a manufacturer/service provider include:

"Why did you choose XXX?" This type of question gauges impact and retention of main advertising messages, including point-of-purchase messages.
"Have you had a problem with the XXX that required repair or return? If so, what was the general nature of the problem?"
If a customer called for support, "What was the nature of your contact with us?"
"How well did the experience match your expectations?"

A customer who has talked with others about their experience could be asked, "What did you say?" This type of open-ended question can be coded and then sorted into groups of positive or negative.

A chart graphically depicts the overall results from the research. Each of the key satisfaction issues are plotted on the graph with the more important issues (as rated by the customers) being higher on the graph. In this manner, the key strengths and vulnerabilities are charted.

An additional analysis is typically performed which determines which customers are likely to remain loyal and which are at risk. At risk customers are those the company is likely to lose because they are highly dissatisfied with the company. This gives a company a measurement of how many customers it may lose to competitors. Over time, a comparison of the results allows a company to see how its situation has changed. Feedback on results, implementation of improvements and areas where additional progress is still desired should be communicated to all employees on a periodic basis.

Demographic household information can also be asked and age, income and geographic region can be reported.

Listening to the Voice of the Customer and acting on the customer's input is the secret to maintaining continuous improvement. Clear, consistent and systematic improvement is necessary to retain customers for life.

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