Voice of the Customer

Voice of the Customer is a term that describes your customer’s feedback about their experiences with and expectations for your products or services. - Best heard as an “ongoing conversation” - Incorporates multiple touch points with the customer that may come from different parts of your organization - Collected in a timely way to allow you to improve your existing products/services, create add-ons/new features and generate new products

Why Listen to the VOC? Identify voiced needs and wants Prioritize issues and development Solicit and evaluate new concepts, ideas and solutions Energize your organization to respond But… If you ask, they expect you to listen, act and report back to them

Listening Putting actionable data into the hands of the right people Take action Uncover the insights Get ready to do something about it Both functional and cross-functional forums

Fact Collection: Customer Surveys, Customer Scorecards, Online Polls, Market Research, Product Response Cards, Customer Observation, etc. Opinion Gathering: Customer Surveys, Exit Interviews, Customer Interviews, “Day in the life/Ride Alongs”, Focus Groups, Blogs/Forums, Customer Observation, etc. Data Mining: Warranty Info, Service Calls, Technical Support Data, Call center Data, Sales Data, Demographic Info, Point of Sale Data, etc. Ear to the Ground: Blog Watch, Internet Searches, News Reports/Stories, Employee Reports on Customer Interactions, Customer Complaints and Praise

Continental Mills Example B2C B2B Retailers Distributors Chain Accounts Consumers Consumers Consumers Restaurants, Cafeterias... Briefly describe how we collect Voice of the Customer data at Continental Mills and what we’ve done with it Annual Scorecard Meetings Ear to the Ground (blogs, facebook, salesforce input) Market Research Consumer Response (email, 800#, online)