Integrating the Voice of the Consumer
Integrating the Voice of the Consumer
Any organization that desires to remain in business has as an objective to be “customer focused.” It is an admirable objective but vision is much easier than executing on the vision.
Product companies, especially in information technology, realize that placing the product manager of an application in front of clients or prospects assists in integrating the voice of the consumer (VOC) into future products.
The product manager in front of the customer is not an automatic guarantee of success of a product. Certainly, the other “P’s” of marketing such as price, promotion, etc. enter into success of a product.
However, the core product meeting a customer’s needs is key to the value equation. The client may buy the product once but if there is limited value equation then the probably of renewal or repurchase is minimal.
Product manager’s in front a client or prospect has risks which can be managed. A group from an organization may go in front of a client and return to the office only to retrench to preconceived ideas and bias. Further, the voice of the consumer may be twisted to justify a product with which the team maybe heavily emotionally and economically invested. “We went to the clients, listened to them and are going to what we think we heard” only to pursue a path which was never stated by the client.
The best method to prevent such a bias is to encourage tape recording and direct transcription of the voice of the customer. This has the potential if not properly positioned, of intimidating the client. Why would a client want to disclose their confidential business issues without some legal guarantee?
Positioning recordings, either audio or video with a client, involves the upfront discussion that one is attempting to capture and meet the business requirements of the client. To assure confidentiality of the information, a nondisclosure agreement may be prudent.
There are also many ways to query many clients at one regarding application enhancements in a “secure” environment without going onsite which significantly decreases the costs. Most the of the long distance carriers and many net companies offer service to have multiple clients on a call at once where the clients do not know who the other parties are and the parties are able to ask confidential business questions in a secure environment. Thus,...