Voice of the customer: revenue & growth (# 2)
ONLY 14% OF COMPANIES’ UNIQUE BENEFITS ARE BOTH UNIQUE AND BENEFICIAL (THE CEB)
Improving Customer Experience (CX) is on everyone’s mind – and it should be. It is competitive advantage. If you're trying to grow your business, you are focused on the CX. Voice of the Customer maps the CX your customers’ needs so you can deliver that experience and drive more revenue. Voice of the customer is the foundation for all you do, informing your Go2Market strategy and mitigating a haunting fact:
Your Value Proposition is the promise of your offer to improve the business livelihood of customers. It’s part destination, and part journey.
Value Delivery – “Customer Experience” – is keeping the promise of the value prop. This is where you provide unique value and when customers become advocates.
Little information exists in the public domain addressing voice of the customer for B2B companies, particularly B2B service companies. Transactions often take longer than B2C transactions and delivery can span months, or years. Conversely, B2C enterprises have a high volume of transaction data, sales channels and touch points to analyze buyer behavior and decision criteria. For B2B companies, voice of the customer is underutilized - but strategic and necessary. Your customers are always answering 3 questions:
Why Change?
Why Now?
Why with you?
You may remember a time when clipboard-wielding survey people gathered at the entrance to a mall to ask shoppers about the use of a particular product. After Chrysler introduced the ‘mini-van’ concept, mall-goers were often stopped to answer questions about their experience with their mini-van. The problem with this ad hoc survey approach is the consumer is not in the context of using the product, so their insights at that moment are limited. They are on their way to get jeans for their children or pick up a gift for a loved one. So, they provide a quick answer so they can be on their way. Common responses included those such as “it would be nice if there were more cup holders.” Hence, more cup holders.
Honda recognized the flaw in this approach and implemented a day-in-the-life approach.
They mounted cameras on Odyssey vans and gave the keys to families to use for a time. Now they can “see” the driver struggle to open the door with arms full of groceries. They watched as the driver walked around the other side of the van to open the door and let passengers out. Observing the consumer in the context of using the product led to innovations.
Capturing the voice of the customer is to understand decision makers in the context of a day in their life. This is not customer satisfaction, because it’s not about you or your company. It’s about them; it’s about placing decision makers in the context of making a decision that involves your services and/or products.
HOW TO CAPTURE VOICE OF THE CUSTOMER
You will interview customers, prospects and customers lost. Use a third-party to lead the interviews and aggregate the data for objectivity. Besides gathering the raw data, the process of what the data means and what to do about it involves art and science. The interview protocol will involve questions that address areas like those in the samples below:
1. The experience desired from the customers’ perspective
What ‘pain’ are they trying to alleviate; for what are they ultimately solving – cost reduction, top line growth, competitiveness, increased productivity?
What words do they use to describe the pain?
2. Have them describe the current state - the current experience - how that process unfolds, and what the desired state looks like (These statements become Value Categories, the foundation of the offering portfolio and messaging platform)
3. Common solutions or options tried, and failed, or successful - why did those attempts fail or succeed?
What is the cost of doing nothing?
Did they try DIY? If so, what was the outcome? Why?
4. Context of the decision process
What conditions exist that prompts a decision to change?
What are the criteria to make the decision and how are those criteria ranked?
How do they quantify the desired experience in terms of money saved, risk mitigated, compliance, etc.?
5. Lead them to describe the experience they have with other business partners where the experience is optimal. What is unique about that relationship and how does that partner make the experience extraordinary?
You cannot build a customer-centric Customer Experience without Voice of the Customer. It's counter-intuitive and we otherwise are guessing at how best to serve our customers.