Boost Business Bottom Line with Voice of the Customer Assessments

— 5 minute read

Sales managers have relied on the territory sales representative to be the eyes and the ears that gather valuable customer intelligence. For many companies, customer knowledge gets shared, but only to be forgotten after weekly sales meetings or lost due to insufficient documentation in call notes in the Customer Relationship Management system (CRM) or filtered by the sales representative. Unfortunately, you only hear negative feedback when the customer calls with news that they are taking their business to one of your competitors. Then, gathering customer knowledge is too late.

Rather than waiting for relationships to unravel, we recommend a Voice of the Customer (VoC) program that brings customer insights into your strategic decision-making process. VoC is how Disciplined Aim gathers truth before you choose — so ambition is aimed at what buyers actually value.

Build your business strategy on the needs and wants of your customers.
Can you hear your customers? They're telling you what they want.

Voice of the Customer Assessments and Sound Research Methods

Do your customers think your sales and service team is customer-oriented? Successful companies with productive business development activities and higher profitability have a strong customer orientation. VoC assessments are research-based tools that provide crucial data to help you understand customer decision-criteria. We specialize in using multiple methods to gather customer feedback. These include interviews and focus groups, surveys, data mining and analytics, observation studies, customer simulations, and experiments. VoC assessments tap customer expectations, preferences, and aversions that help your strategic team make critical business decisions.

Voice of the Customer Assessments allow you to focus your strategic efforts to impact value with your customers.

Product and Service Initiatives

VoC assessments should be the foundation of any new product, process, or service redesign initiative. They help us to understand the wants and needs of the customer. Based on this feedback, we can develop Quality Function Deployment (QFD) process plans and produce design specifications to produce products and services that satisfy real customer needs.

Customer segmentation studies

Perhaps your company believes there are differences in decision criteria among groups of customers. The VoC assessment will help you identify pivotal decision-makers and pinpoint their specific decision criteria.

Targeted messages

Speaking the buyer’s language through focused messages conveys your company’s value proposition. A VoC Assessment helps you determine which value statements have the most impact on different customer segments.

Enhanced Training

Perhaps your company has historically invested significant capital and resources into training your service delivery and sales teams. A VoC Assessment enables you to refine and gear your training approaches to align with the customer’s underlying needs and expectations.

Superior Strategic Planning

Perhaps, there is a need to have a detailed look into the drivers of overall perceived service quality, service experience, customer value enhancement, your company’s source of competitive advantage, strengths and vulnerabilities, and brand image. A VoC Assessment will allow you to enhance your brand promise and better position your company to accelerate brand authenticity and resonance.

Increased Customer Lifetime Value

You desire to gauge a baseline understanding for more refined service and product delivery and targeted promotional strategies to reach and attract the most qualified customers with substantial customer lifetime value. A VoC Assessment will determine the attributes and perceptions that define your company’s value proposition and brand promise.

Frequently asked questions

What is a Voice of the Customer assessment?

A Voice of the Customer (VoC) assessment is a research-based tool that provides crucial data to help you understand customer decision-criteria. It taps the expectations, preferences, and aversions your customers hold — the input your strategic team needs to make critical business decisions.

What methods does a VoC assessment use?

We specialize in using multiple methods to gather customer feedback. These include interviews and focus groups, surveys, data mining and analytics, observation studies, customer simulations, and experiments.

We already hear from customers through our sales team — why run a formal VoC program?

The territory sales representative has long been the eyes and ears gathering customer intelligence, but that knowledge is often forgotten after weekly sales meetings, lost to insufficient documentation in CRM call notes, or filtered by the sales representative. A VoC program brings customer insights into your strategic decision-making process — rather than waiting to hear negative feedback when a customer takes their business to a competitor.

Why hire an outside consultant to conduct the research?

Customers are more comfortable providing open and honest feedback when they know it remains anonymous and confidential — and confidentiality in data gathering increases the reliability of results. An outside researcher also brings a fresh set of eyes that prevents the study from being tainted by the “tribal knowledge factor,” and it frees your internal team from the time and resource drain of running the research while experts shorten the project’s timeframe.

What happens on a discovery call?

A 30-minute conversation about the decision in front of you, the data you have (and lack), and whether an engagement is the right next step. Schedule a discovery call.

Ready to connect customer truth to an executable plan? Explore strategic planning consulting in Memphis, business analytics, or schedule a discovery call with Kevin Westbrook.