Do you really hear the Voice Of the Customer!

Of late I hear more and more people talking about Voice of the Customer as a powerful tool to understand the customer. That, of course, must be true.

I am old enough to remember the well told the story of the corner shopkeeper who spent his time talking with and understanding his customers needs so well that he could predict and prepare for their every visit to his retail emporium.

I suspect the resurgence in this approach has a lot to do with the power of the interweb to fire off numerous 100-word surveys and, to engage in some level of dialogue on Social Media. However, surveys are not a conversation, and social media could provide an easily misinterpreted dialog.

Having worked in the John Lewis insight unit in the late 90's, I found out how difficult it is to ask the right questions in a survey.

Consider the following questions:

Would you like same day delivery at under £5.00?

The customer will nearly always say YES!

Perhaps the question would be better if we asked:

Would you like same day delivery OR the item in stock every time you visit the store?

Most customers would choose the latter.

These are very simple examples, but when I read surveys that are sent to me I see these fundamental errors more and more.

Recently a client asked me to review some analysis of survey and social media verbatim statements. The original study had indicated that customers were concerned that the service was too expensive.

Though a subsequent series of Voice Workshops and open discussion with the customer, we discovered that the problem was with the value not cost and that customers did not believe that they were receiving the service they were paying for. This simple misunderstanding of the information gathered could have had significant consequences.

In my opinion, the over-reliance on a survey or raw social media data is driven by an obsession to collect massive quantities of data to validate a sample.

I have always believed that in most customer situations, the customer needs are simple. Practically this means that you don't need to speak to many customers, perhaps as few as 100 to gain a real understanding of what they need and expect from your organisation.

This simple application of saturation theory, that is to say when you hear the same thing time and time again its true, and the real insight you gain through an interactive conversation is worth a million surveys.

I find myself wishing that more organisations would, at least, balance their extensive customer data collection activities with a good old high-quality customer conversation.

Next time, I'll talk about some simple rules you can use to determine exactly what adds value to the customer experience.