Volume 6, #3, April, 2008
The VOC Top Ten
Ten Concrete Ways to Tie Customer Value to ROI
"We couldn't believe that the 'holy grail' product our engineers have been going after all these years was something that customers didn't really care about."
-- Team leader of a market-driven product definition project
Could you make a similar statement about your company's products? If so, celebrate the fact that you have a surprising degree of insight into what your customers value. If not, you'll want a way to find out what customers really do care about. We have identified ten best practices for conducting voice-of-the customer research, which, when wisely applied, can yield objective information about what customers value.
First, a quick rundown of the top ten:
- Gather input from a broad cross-section of customers and non-customers.
- Observe, interview, and probe.
- Create an interview guide, not an interview script.
- Get a complete transcript of each customer interaction.
- Involve a cross-functional team in the observation and interview process.
- Create a story with images from the transcripts.
- Translate the story into measurable requirements.
- Survey to establish quantitative results.
- Drive investment by competitive position and unmet customer needs.
- Innovate where there are gaps in customer value.
Ten Best Practices for Voice of the Customer: Revealed
Gather input from a broad cross section of customers and non-customers.
Visit a cross section of people who use -- or would use -- your product or service to solve their problems. Broad coverage helps you achieve the greatest depth and breadth of market inputs, but the question always arises: How many sites do we need to visit? The answer depends on many factors, such as how many markets you're selling into and the geographical reach of your product. You want to visit enough people to gain an understanding of a high percentage of problems. A good guideline is
o visit 15 - 20 sites (if your product targets a single market segment);
o interview 3-5 individuals per site;
o visit 3-5 sites per market segment or customer type;
o talk to 3-5 individuals per function or title.
Observe, interview, and probe.
This is how you get a feeling for the context in which potential customers operate so you understand what gets in their way as they try to do their jobs. Direct observation gives you an unfiltered view of the customers' environment -- which is why you must conduct these interviews in person, not by phone.
Create an interview guide, not an interview script.
The adage "Chance favors the prepared mind" is useful to remember here. Sticking too rigidly to a script (like those pesky phone solicitors) shuts your mind off to possibilities. On the other hand, going in completely unprepared doesn't provide enough focus. An interview guide is the perfect compromise.
Get a complete transcript of each customer interaction.
We all hear what we want to hear, or what we're programmed to hear. When everyone can read a customer's exact words, there's little opportunity for bias or filtering. A transcript increases the likelihood that everyone will understand what the customer is actually saying.
Involve a cross-functional team in the observation and interview process.
Sure, you can have your marketing team conduct interviews and then come back and tell everyone else what they discovered. But when people are involved in the actual interviewing, when they see and hear from the customer directly, they internalize the experience. Later, this allows the team to build consensus. Having engineers go out alongside marketing and customer support staff to conduct the interviews can have a profound impact -- on the engineers and on the process. You'll end up with different perspectives on the experience.
Create a story with images from the transcripts.
The story and images give you the deep, visceral picture of what problems your customers or potential customers suffer. Is it interminable wait times for software to load? Little pieces of lint that stick to their clothing? When you have these pictures, you have the basis for innovation.
Translate the story into measurable requirements.
Now is when you take the touchy-feely and make it quantifiable. This removes ambiguity by stating who has the problem and what is the missing functionality. Include a scalable component so you will have something measurable against which you can compare potential solutions. The requirements don't, however, include targets or solutions.
Survey to establish quantitative results.
Now you want statistically significant results (as opposed to your earlier customer visits) that help you prioritize, validate, and analyze each key customer requirement. This gives you -- and the rest of the team -- confidence in the direction you're pursuing, and actual data on which to base decisions.
Drive investment by competitive position and unmet customer needs.
By investing where customer needs are greatest, and thus where addressing those needs yields the greatest value to customers, you get the biggest return on your investment. You balance this with your strategic and competitive position.
Innovate where there are gaps in customer value.
By putting these best practices in place around gathering voice of the customer data, you'll be able to invest with confidence in new ideas and innovations.
