Co-Creating the Voice of the Customer Program
Posted by Vovici Blog on Mon, Mar 28, 2011
Market researchers talk about the need for their clients to engage in co-creation with their customers, yet too few of us ourselves engage in co-creation with our own clients. For instance, it’s easier to implement a Voice of the Customer program identically to the way we did it last time. Perhaps we even have benchmarks or chosen metrics that require us to do so.
But every company is unique. Companies can be in the same industry and yet face very different challenges, due to different business models, different distribution channels and different brand positioning. What works for one organization’s Voice of the Customer program doesn’t work for another. Even Fred Reichheld, author of the one-size-fits-all NPS system, discusses in The Ultimate Question the industries and situations for which the NPS approach is suboptimal.
Instead of proposing a cookie-cutter methodology, bake up something new from the standard ingredients. Conduct some research on the research an organization is currently doing. Many new VOC programs inherit a decentralized set of surveys and listening posts that no one has looked at holistically. When you study them as a group, you will discover things that are working well and resonate with staff; you’ll also discover challenges that haven’t yet been addressed, such as the lack of actionable information.
At the end of the day, successful Voice of the Customer programs are implemented and embraced internally. They can’t just be imposed from outside. But internal program managers often lack perspective on what other organizations are doing. Co-creating a VOC program, with external consultants working in tandem with an internal team, offers a greater chance to build a program that ultimately strengthens customer satisfaction, loyalty and lifetime value.
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