By Whitney Satin
When B2B marketers look for ways to improve their customer experience, they typically rely on voice of the customer (VOC) to direct their investment decisions. More often than not, marketers tackle touchpoints that customers gripe about most frequently or fix issues mentioned by the largest customers. But as far as helping companies demonstrate their unique benefits, this is rarely the best approach.
Companies with the highest levels of loyalty have a clear understanding about what distinguishes their company from competitors and, more critically, the unique benefits customers get as a result. In these organizations, improving the customer experience means looking for opportunities to bring these unique benefits to life, NOT simply adhering to problems surfaced via VOC. While customer voice is useful for a great many things, when it comes to bringing focus to your unique benefits, marketers should recognize that VOC poses three major constraints:
- Almost by definition, it can only focus on places where customers have voice—in other words, your existing set of touchpoints. VOC will not naturally suggest or get you feedback on new or different touchpoints that may best exemplify unique benefits.
- VOC keeps you firmly planted in the world of common benefits. Even worse, that feedback is often very generic. We often get bland responses like “you don’t really seem to understand my business,” but what this means vis-à-vis the experience is often left wide open to interpretation.
- VOC can lead you into a competitive hornets nest. Customers may very well surface places where your competitor’s unique benefits shine, places where you’re not well positioned to compete and where you could potentially spend lots of money chasing after a benefit you’ll never be able to truly “own”.
If you’re not relying on VOC, how can you pick your customer experience battles more wisely? How do you know what touchpoints are really best positioned to demonstrate the unique benefits you have to offer?
MLC members interested in a sneak peak can check out how Texas Instruments identified the most critical touchpoints in their experience; otherwise, stay tuned for my next post.
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on 8 January 10
Respond
Just wanted to comment that the VOC concept or tool as it relates to Lean Six Sigma does address and deal with the concerns raised above by ensuring generic customer feedback is turned into value add process needs or requirements. The point I’d like to reinforce is that if VOC is not done properly and within the right context, business consequences can be serious. I plan to review the Texas Instruments approach regardless.
on 9 January 10
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I have used the phrase “Buyers are liars” in the workshops of less formal presentations. The problem with listening to the VOC is that the consumer doesn’t really know what they want or need, and negative feedback does not always offer an accurate gauge of areas for opportunity to companies. Private consumers and companies may know what they need but they do not always know the best solutions to get what they need.
Great article.
on 14 January 10
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As stated here, the most effective VOC responses come when they address as narrow an issue as possible (i.e. specific products for specific customers in specific markets). The problem is that it takes a lot of money and resources to acquire VOC at such a narrow level, especially for companies with extensive product lines and many markets to reach. So, instead they resort to bundled research efforts that provide innacurate bundled answers. As always, it all comes down to money.
on 14 January 10
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You’re not going to get ideas for disruptive innovations from VOC, since you’re trying to invent a product that the customer doesn’t even know exists. And remember, it’s VOC not VOD – trying to collect VOC info from your distributors or other channel partners isn’t the same as interviewing end-users.
on 15 January 10
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Mapping the entire value chain is an important step. In B2B, we can’t afford to rely solely on the direct customer to inform us of their customer’s needs, which could identify new opportunities and innovations. Also, understanding the problems the targeted customers are trying to solve — by watching what they really do (in addition to an interview), can be quite insightful.
on 15 January 10
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VOC can not and should not be interpreted literally. The story of Henry Ford’s comment on VOC was “if I had asked my customer what they want, they would have told me a faster horse.” The insights here are “faster” and “horse”. It is a matter of how you translate them into your product uniqueness after all..
on 21 January 10
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The term VOC is used widely but often inappropriately. A lot of companies use the VOC to describe any type of customer feedback, focus groups, sureys, etc., while a true Voice of Customer analysis has a very exact methodology that can produce breaththrough results. I agree that if you ask a customer what they think about something, they can only relate to what they know. True VOC studies seek to understand the customers needs and then look for solutions to those needs.
on 13 October 10
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I agree with Pamela. The response, “you don’t really seem to understand my business”, is not really VOC. Not every word uttered by customer is qualified to be VOC. But what is the criteria for determining which is VOC and which is not.
on 4 January 11
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Great post Whitney. I am a big advocate with closing the loop with each B2B customer so that the issues can be immediately resolved at each account (post survey) as well as the learning that happens during each interaction. This is a great opportunity to thank promoters and identify opportunities to leverage their praises. It also helps to clarify the vague responses from the survey and creates a great customer centric mindset with the account managers and your organization. I find that most of the time the issues are relationship based and that this close attention to each customer often works wonders. For product related feedback I look for trends and I understand that a VOC program may not uncover the latent needs of customers but it will provide useful insights for sure.
on 12 November 11
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Actually, you can and should discover potential disruptive innovations through VOC. But this only occurs if several criteria are met:
1) The VOC researchers have some insight into the business or industry they are studying
2) Open ended questions are focused and thoughtful
3) The VOC researcher MUST spend 90% of his or her time listening, not taking notes! If notes are a must, then bring an assistant to capture them
4) The research questions are NOT pre-scripted. Pre-scripted questions lead the conversation in the direction of the interviewer, and don’t capture what the customer/consumer want/need.
5) Engineering staff should accompany the research effort in order to a) get the buy in of engineering, and b) get engineering thinking about innovative solutions to the issues/concerns raised by consumer/customer.
Innovation flows from identifying a problem to be solved, clearly defining the problem, and then developing a solution. This all sounds easy on the surface, but many companies want to take short cuts, and this rarely if ever works.
Cheers,
- Bruce W