Are you listening to the VOICE of your customer?

As human beings we’ve all experienced the unfortunate consequences of being misunderstood. The results of miscommunication are sometimes unpleasant, just ask the parent of a teenager! In situations where this occurs involving total strangers the sub-optimal outcomes can often be dismissed with an eye roll or a shrug, but not so in product and marketing management. Unfortunately, misunderstandings in our profession often lead to missed opportunities, poorly designed products and off-base marketing messages, and as such we need to strive to minimize them. 

Within the span of my career I’ve had the privilege and opportunity to interface with current and potential customers all over the world while working with an expansive set of product solutions across a variety of markets and industries. During this time, I’ve come to fully understand that one of the most powerful tenets of well-organized product management is the foundational ability and desire to ask questions, observe, and truly listen to the “voice” of our customers. 

Listen & watch

For all of us, our outgoing thoughts presented in the form of the spoken word are bound by the language we’re conversing in, a dynamic translation that’s concurrently taking place in our mind if it’s not our native tongue, the slang terms we use, the volume we project each word with, the cadence of our sentences, our tone, and our current emotional state. Every attempt to communicate includes a reasonable likelihood that the receiver will misunderstand at least some of what we’re trying to say. This is exactly what’s happening as we collect input from our customers, and as product and marketing managers we need ensure that we’re truly listening to the voice of our customers. 

In this context, I’m not just referring to “Voice of the Customer” (VOC), defined as “the in-depth process of capturing customer expectations, preferences and aversions”. I’m literally referring to the customer’s voice… that is, the words being spoken and the manner in which they’re being delivered. We need to ask enough questions, in different ways, such as to minimize the potential for miscommunication and misunderstanding. Like a physician attempting to diagnose a patient’s illness we need to watch carefully for body language, facial expressions, hand movements. For all the Star Trek fans out there, we’re called upon to come as close to the Vulcan “mind meld” as we possibly can…although for sure there is only one Spock!

Read between the lines

With verbal communication we must listen and watch to make sure we understand our customers as well as possible. However, there’s more. We also must have the ability to translate written words into coherent and actionable perspectives and needs, which with the advance of technology is becoming more of a challenge. A common assumption is that technology has improved our ability to communicate. Whereas it certainly has made it easier from an availability and connectivity perspective, where it involves a need to develop a deep understanding of another person’s thoughts this may not be the case.

Our reliance on email and textual communication to gather customer input data is inherently flawed as it necessitates each of us to interpret an identical set of written words through the filters of our own perspectives, prejudices and expectations, absent the source of the input. Since we all have a completely different set of personal filters, the reality that every individual reading the input will interpret it exactly the same way is highly unlikely. This is why we tend to gather as groups to review customer feedback, and after hours of disagreement we have no option other to assign someone to go back and ask the customer for clarification! As product managers and marketers, it is paramount that we recognize and account for this inevitable phenomenon and take steps to validate assumptions while in the process of collecting the data. To not do so invites project delays, business risk, and at worst the loss of opportunities and customers. 

Conclusion

One of the golden rules of the VOC process is to always record a customer’s input in their “own words” so as to not lose meaning. While this is essentially a good and important rule, it goes without saying that one of our jobs as product managers and marketers is to make sure these words convey clear and unambiguous messages. During the process of interviewing and collecting information from our customers we need to remain cognizant of the fact that language, education level, emotion, writing skills and a host of other factors all come together to influence the outcome as we document and define our detailed understanding of the customer requirements and set priorities. Like a physician diagnosing a patient or an attorney cross examining a witness, it is our job to seek clarity at all times to the very best of our abilities. It’s also a privilege to be a position to help make people happy and improve their lives, even if it’s only temporary.