Voice of the Customer (VOC) is a term use in business to express the process of capturing a customer's requirements. Specifically, the Voice of the Customer is a market research technique that produces a detailed set of customer wants and needs, organized into a hierarchical structure, and then prioritized in terms of relative importance and satisfaction with current alternatives. Voice of the Customer studies characteristically consist of both qualitative and quantitative research steps.

A good Voice of the Customer study provides:

1) A detailed understanding of the customer's requirements
2) A common language for the team going forward
3) Key input for the setting of appropriate design specifications for the new product or service
4) A highly useful springboard for product innovation.

When you visit customers to listen to their voice, you should be listening and not talking. Human beings cannot do both of this at the same time. When you are visiting customers to listen to them, your role is that of an explorer. You have to keep your eyes and ears open. Customers do not always tell you the whole story, not because they are withholding information, but in many cases sometimes they themselves do not recognize the pain points they have. It is up to you as an explorer, to ask the right questions and to get the customer to tell you their real problems that if solved would create a product differentiation for your product.

Benefits of the WHYs

While getting customer response the one word which help a lot is answer of WHY. "Why", you can peel away the layers of symptoms which can lead to the root cause of a problem. Very often the ostensible reason for a problem will lead you to another question.

- Help identify the root cause of a problem.
- Determine the relationship between different root causes of a problem.
- One of the simplest tools easy to complete without statistical analysis.

Write down the specific problem. Writing the issue helps you formalize the problem and describe it completely. It also helps a team focus on the same problem. Ask why the problem happens and write the answer down below the problem. If the answer you just provided doesn't identify the root cause of the problem that you wrote down in steps.

To make users feel at ease, do the following things at the start of the conversation: -

1) Tell them that you are not a sales person and that you are not trying to sell them anything. You are trying to get their honest feedback about your products so that you can make it work better for them.

2) Tell them that you want to hear both the good and the bad news about the product. Hence, tell the customer not to sugar coat anything. You are not here to defend anything about your product but to make sure that you get honest feedback from them about your product.

3) Make sure that if the customer blames your company for some issue that is not under your control, do not ratify (you are hearing only one side of the issue), but acknowledge that you have noted down the issue and you will make sure it is brought to the attention of the right people in your company who can resolve the issue to the customer's satisfaction.

4) Once the stage is set, start with some softball questions. Not everyone likes to talk especially about your product. So ask them to talk about what they know best - their business and their products. This prevents them from starting the discussion with a laundry list of enhancements, but at a much higher level. After all they are ONLY using their product to get better at their business. Hence this helps you to understand their business processes, how your product fits into their processes and then allows you to slowly move the conversation towards pain points, unmet needs and then gradually bringing the focus to your products.

So many companies used this technique and found that it works very well to build the rapport with the customer and as well as with the Organization. By using this technique you may find that you will need to ask the question fewer or more times than before you find the issue related to a problem.


Posted by:
Marketing Team
Call Centers India Inc,
www.callcentersindia.com