Creating Value from Voice of Customer
Running a small business is no easy feat. It takes someone with grit and determination to meet every deadline, balance front-end operations while keeping the lights on, manage each employee, update every webpage, and so on. It’s a lot, and the women and men who pull it off on a daily basis are nothing short of amazing.
In the midst of the craziness of running a small business, it’s easy to lose focus of what really matters. Checklists and deadlines can take priority and precedence over what’s crucial. Thankfully, business owners have one tool that can align all work into what is most important. That tool, of course, is VoC.
Understanding VoC
Voice of Customer (also called Voice of Client or VoC) enables small business owners to create. It gives them the power to remove. It empowers them to add, delete, cancel, redesign, streamline, optimize, and improve—all in the name of creating value for the customer.
For a small business, value is anything that a customer would be willing to pay for. Not everything that a small business produces or offers is valuable to a client. In fact, most organizations by their nature do things and sell things that don’t create value for the client. Even one-person operations can be fraught with waste and non-value-added process steps that would cause a customer to raise an eyebrow. A customer should be able to walk into any small business and affirm that they they would pay for what is being created or completed.
So, what’s the connection between value and Voice of Customer? Simply this—a small business determines what is valuable by listening to its customers. Customers are hungry to provide feedback for what they pay for, and small businesses should be hungry to listen to that feedback, whether positive feedback or constructive criticism. Sadly, most businesses put collecting VoC on the back burner, saying that other daily processes must be done to keep the lights on. Collecting VoC will happen when the to-do list gets a little shorter, small business owners tell themselves. The truth is, the to-do list will never get shorter, and consistent qualitative VoC doesn’t just happen. It’s important for small businesses to orient with the client first so that they can maximize value creation.
Start with what your customer actually cares about
I’ll be blunt—not every bell and whistle a small business offers is one that a customer cares about. So if they don’t care about it, why would they want to pay for it? And if they don’t want to pay for it, then why would a small business offer it? Asking the client outright before designing a product or developing a service can save a business a lot of otherwise wasted time, especially if the client’s input is obtained only after the design process is complete. Proper market research and customer surveying before launch, using services like Qualtrics for example, can ensure that you are providing the most valuable product or service for your customers.
Make reviewing customer feedback common and regular
Make it a habit for you (and your team, if there are more than one of you) to review every piece of feedback a client provides, even if it’s a basic positive review. Start each week with reviewing Voice of Customer so that every to-do item that follows further builds off of that feedback. If it’s all positive, then that’s awesome. Continue doing what you do best. But if you come across a valid piece of feedback or client concern, pump the brakes for a second and dig in a little deeper. As much as we hate to admit it, sometimes website errors, customer service snafus, and quality defects happen. Having a pulse on the heartbeat of what a client experiences can ensure that the great keeps being great and the bad is rare.
Provide multiple avenues for customers to provide feedback
Utilize product reviews and recurring customer surveys as different means of collecting valuable Voice of Customer. For surveys sent to customers who have paid for your service or product, don’t be afraid to ask questions that are sometimes hard to hear the answer to. Questions that cause the client to think critically about what specifically they like, what perhaps wasn’t up to their expectation, and where a small business can improve can uncover really important opportunities that weren’t evident before. Services like SurveyMonkey or a simple Google Form can provide a much-needed medium for consistent Voice of Customer. If you’re going to offer incentives for customers to provide their feedback (for example, “Take our survey, get a future discount!”), do the customer a favor and make the discount percentage actually worthwhile for a customer to take their time and go through the survey. You need information, so make it worthwhile for customers to give it.
Finally, an under-utilized method of obtaining VoC is through client interviews. This method is valuable because, although you can’t collect a ton of responses due to time, it does allow the opportunity to ask follow-up questions that can provide even more qualitative insights that weren’t known before. If you need some help getting started, I highly recommend this article from userinterviews.com.
Understand that not everything is possible and not all feedback is valid
This may sound contrary to everything written so far, but not every piece of feedback is one that should result in action. Sometimes customers say outrageous things or make demands that just cannot be reasonably met, despite best efforts to provide great service. In addition, sometimes clients ask for new features or services that are simply out of scope for what a small business can provide. It’s necessary to know what is possible and reasonable to take action on. And sometimes it’s necessary to let a customer walk or re-define a working relationship due to changing customer needs.
Be willing to make changes based on what your customers say
Value creation can’t happen unless small business owners are willing to actually implement suggested changes from the customer. Sometimes even a founder has to admit that something they assumed to be true simply wasn’t. A feature that a small business owner was really excited about may not have resulted in the customer applause that they expected. But the worst thing a small business owner can do is not be willing to swallow their pride and do what customers are asking them to do. Most small business owners are where they are because they have leaned heavily on their own intuition and know-how. But Voice of Customer really needs to be the driving force for most (dare I say “all”?) business decisions.
Conclusion: Let the customer have a say
It’s easy to get caught up in the day-to-day of running a small business. And with all that goes into running a small business, I maintain that small business owners deserve a little extra recognition for getting it done. For those small business owners who need a little guidance on how to make time or collect the best VoC, just drop a line to set up time for us to meet. Helping small businesses throughout PA reach their customers is what I do here, so don’t hesitate to reach out. But to emphasize, it is so, so important to remember that the day-to-day has to be centered around what the client values. And what the client values can’t be known unless the client has an avenue to offer their voice, someone is willing to listen, and changes can be made accordingly.
