Customer-Centric Twist on Voice of the Customer

By Lynn Hunsaker

What’s the difference between the way customers volunteer feedback versus the way they’re requested to give feedback? One revolves around outcomes in the customer’s world, whereas the other revolves around customer satisfaction enablers in the company’s world. Maybe it’s time to re-evaluate customer feedback strategies for better alignment with the way customers see things.

Re-assessment of customer feedback strategy is recommended by the 2009 CMO Council study, Service Invention to Increase Retention: "Creating brand preference and differentiation in a crowded market tops the list of challenges. The rapidly changing and converging market ... [is] accenting the need for more adept and analytical customer data integration, listening, feedback and engagement systems."

Outcomes in the Customer's World

Best practices literature on innovation urges companies to thoroughly study customers' jobs-to-be-done.  In other words, what are your customer's desired outcomes?   Peruse your customer-initiated feedback to test this assertion: customers view their relationship with an organization on the basis of their desired outcomes - and much less on the basis of product and service attributes, which are a means-to-an-end from their perspective. These desired outcomes have both emotional and functional elements, and vary by circumstances, such as what initiated the purchase, or the larger context of the purchase.  If the customers' jobs-to-be-done concept is becoming embraced as essential for successful innovation, why is it largely ignored for monitoring of customer experience and satisfaction?

For example, I just completed a survey about my recent cruise to Alaska.  While it was clear to me that the questions were designed to be actionable (and tied to compensation) for the cruise line managers, they were tedious, and I felt frustrated that I couldn't provide context for why I was rating many things as good or very good rather than excellent.  Likely they're equally perplexed that I didn't select a rating of excellent more often. If they'd focused first on my purchase motivation and context, they'd probably have asked more relevant subsequent questions, and consequently received much more valuable and actionable data.  Indeed, while their competitors stick with the traditional company-centric question set on their post-cruise surveys, this company may have found new avenues to "create brand preference and differentiation in a crowded market" by understanding their performance through my lens of desired outcomes.

Tap into Customers' Inherent Performance Measures

Customer's desired outcomes research reveals precise customer wording for measures of satisfaction and promoter behavior. "For any given job, customers collectively apply 50 to 150 metrics to measure how well the job is getting done", says Anthony Ulwick in What Customers Want. "Only when all the metrics for a given job are well satisfied are customers able to execute the job perfectly. Figure out which of the 50 to 150 outcomes for a given job are important and unsatisfied and then systematically devise a few ideas that will better satisfy those underserved outcomes."  What better way can there be to craft the most meaningful monitoring surveys and performance metrics?   

Start with the customers' desired outcomes as the survey questions. For your follow-up questions, you'll probably want to re-phrase what you've used in the past, to focus on the customer's world, rather than the company's world.  A typical question such as How likely is it that you would recommend this company to a friend or colleague? might be re-phrased as: How likely is it that you would help a friend or colleague by suggesting they use this company?

The subtle difference here is about what's in it for me as the customer, in terms of providing value to friends, rather than doing a favor for a company that already received remuneration from the customer.

You may not even need to ask customers specific questions about product and service elements if you have well-correlated data from your initial research on the linkages between the elements of your organization's solution as a means-to-an-end and the customers' desired outcomes.

Smarter Management Guidance

Use of desired outcomes findings for all customer experience management activities could solve these widely reported challenges:

• Different views across the organization of what customers want.
• Disagreement between business units on customer metrics.
• Balancing low respondent fatigue and high response rates.
• Broken linkages between survey results and business results.
• Large gaps in customer and supplier viewpoints of delivering customer-centricity.

Focus on outcomes maintains management's attention on competition as the customer sees it. Customer choice is not always among similar-feature-offerings, but rather, it is among similar-outcome-offerings. For example, good MP3 player brands existed before iPod came on the scene. It could have been a me-too product with small market share. The larger context of customers' desired outcomes, however, included a way to legally and affordably buy songs instead of whole albums, share music and easily create playlists. By understanding this broader desired outcome, Apple innovated the customer experience and not only outpaced its MP3 rivals but also its own core business.

High ROI for Customer-Initiated Feedback

A goldmine of customer-initiated feedback exists, shared via front-line employees, call centers, emails, online communities, the blogosphere, and other conduits. Thanks to advanced data mining, speech analytics, and data integration tools, this formerly disparate resource can take a more central role in guiding continual improvement.

Since customers have taken initiative to voice their opinions, it makes sense to honor their time investment. Of course one motivator is to stem possible negative sentiment, and another is to leverage success stories. Use it to streamline surveys.  And reap sustainable differentiation by truly understanding the customers' world and by weaving that world into yours.

In the 2009 CMO Council study, Turning Customer Pain Into Competitive Gain, two-thirds of companies self-report they don't have a high commitment to customer listening, and the same number don't look for ways to convert problems into opportunities. Even among those that do have a high commitment to customer listening, we can assume that very few are focusing on feedback that revolves around outcomes in the customer's world, rather than customer satisfaction enablers in the company's world.  Clearly, opportunities for competitive advantage exist for organizations that monitor the right things right and take action accordingly.

For more information on defining and using customers' desired outcomes, see the e-handbook, Innovating Superior Customer Experience, at www.clearaction.biz/innovating.

Webcast:

http://www.clearaction.biz/customer-culture_webcast.html

Customer-Centric Culture:  Engagement of Employees & Customers
True customer focus is elusive, as internal realities often overshadow customer considerations in day-to-day decisions and behaviors.  To get beyond lip-service a major shift in organizational culture is necessary.  Learn how to channel leadership and employee engagement to intersect with expectations and long-term well-being of customers.