Capturing the voice of the customer (VOC) entails listening to customers to develop an understanding of their needs and value drivers. Without capturing their customer’s voice, companies risk alienating them, lowering customer satisfaction, and slowing financial growth. Undoubtedly, the first and most critical step in value creation for customers is to gather their voices.
Capturing the voice of the customer is a systematic process that takes many forms such as in-depth interviews, focus groups, and customer observation. Figure 1 shows the main techniques used by companies to capture the voice of the customer.
FIGURE 1
Techniques for Obtaining Voice of Customer
FOCUS GROUPS & IN-DEPTH INTERVIEWS. Focus groups and/or in-depth interviews are two of the most widely used VOC techniques. In a focus group, the company can bring together 5-15 consumers to discuss a specific topic. The discussion is led by a trained moderator who guides the conversations to reveal consumers’ beliefs, attitudes, perceptions, and desires related to a product or service. In-depth interviews are very similar, except they are done by a trained interviewer in a one-on-one setting with a consumer.
ETHNOGRAPHY & OBSERVATION. Sometimes customers are unwilling or unable to verbally describe their experience. In such a case, companies observe customers in their naturalistic setting. Today, the observation can be done in person or through technologies such as video recording or body and eye tracking sensors. Consumers may also be invited to user-experience labs where they consume currently available or completely new-to-the-world products. Trained researchers can observe them and draw insights about product design.
ONLINE AND SOCIAL MEDIA CONTENT. Online and social media content is one of the richest sources of customer voice. Consumers leave a large amount of content on websites, social media, and online forums. This content can be in the form of reviews, social media posts, blogs, and videos. Companies can analyze this content to gain insights about their customers’ needs.
CROWDSOURCING. Companies like LEGO have developed large online user communities to obtain and refine ideas about product and service offerings. Platform participants become a source of ideas and critiques that enable a company to improve its offerings. Participants typically take pride in being part of the company’s community and feel intellectually and emotionally rewarded when they see their ideas voted up. In some cases, companies provide
financial incentives for consumers to participate by creating contests with cash rewards.
CONCLUSION: To improve customer satisfaction, companies start by systematically listening to their customers. A single company will use more than one customer voice technique. As an example, a successful retailer such as Walmart may conduct focus groups and in-depth interviews, observe customers shopping in its stores, mine online reviews and posts from customers, and crowdsource ideas from an online platform.
Learn more about product positioning in Chapter 2 of Market-Based Management (7th edition). Chapter 1 can be reviewed online at www.mbm-book.com.
References:
- Takahashi, Dean. (1998) “Your career matters: Doing fieldwork in the high-tech jungle,” Wall Street Journal, October 27, page B1.
- Griffin, Abbie, and John R. Hauser. (1993) “The voice of the customer,” Marketing Science, 12(1), 1-27.
- Chawla, Shuchi, Jason D. Hartline, and Balasubramanian Sivan. (2019) “Optimal crowdsourcing contests,” Games and Economic Behavior, 113, 80-96.