The topic of the Voice of the Customer (VoC) has many branches and sub-categories.  Just on the topic of surveys alone (which is only a part of VoC), there are tons of thoughts: We discuss things like the formatting of surveys, the proper response rates, how and what sorts of questions to ask, which channel we should use to survey, even whom to survey.  Beyond that there are numerous other methods of collecting the Voice of the Customer:  market analyses, social media (SoMe) monitoring and analysis, competitive comparisons, and of course we can’t forget Walking in the Customers’ Shoes.  Each of these other methods likewise comes with their own set of approaches and execution methods.

But what about what comes out of those efforts?  Sometimes we concern ourselves so much with the day-to-day transactional concerns about collecting the VoC, we forget why we’re doing it in the first place.  In the worst case, we substitute raw winning vs. losing motivations for insights, and devolve the entire process to: “What’s the score today?”  Let’s back up a bit, though, and recognize what I’ve said so many times I should just make a bumper-sticker out of it:  VoC insights are of no use if you don’t use them to improve your Customers’ experiences.  That leads to a remarkable—and to some, shocking—conclusion:

You should be hungry for negative feedback. (more…)