B2B Voice of Customer: How Picturing a Box Will Help You Think Out of It

VOC CUBED

Voice-of-Customer work, also known as VOC, has a name that says it all.  Go out, talk to some customers, hear their voice, check it off, job done.  The problem with that approach is that it only captures the views of one group when you really need the perspective of three (or even four) groups. Not only do we need to track the pulse of how Customers feel, we should also know what people in our own Company think and understand the views of our distribution Channels.  Only with this important audience triad can we get a truly three-dimensional view of the market.  I call it VOC3. Company-Channels-Customers. Each dimension helps form a cube – and this box can hold important secrets to success. Armed with this insight, we can more clearly and confidently break out of current practices into new, innovative approaches that gain us profitable share. 

WHY VOC?

Before going further, it’s worth discussing why we conduct VOC work in the first place.  I’ve conducted hundreds of VOC studies over the course of my career, personally interviewing thousands of people, from custodians to CEOs  Below are some of the many objectives behind my projects; the top reasons for gaining both internal and external perspective:

·       Macro trends

·       Pricing analysis

·       Prototype testing

·       Customer satisfaction

·       Market segmentation

·       Persona development

·       Buyer process mapping

·       New market exploration

·       Pain point determination

·       Incentive program design

·       Segment application needs

·       Insight for content creation

·       Channel structure evaluation

·       User acceptance for websites

·       Value proposition articulation

·       Researching media preferences

·       New product or service discovery

·       Customer experience improvement

Those are just a few of the motivations behind projects I’ve been a part of.  Once the objectives are established, I become as informed as possible before speaking with the most important stakeholders.  Remember, VOC can actually stand for any of the three planes of our insights cube:  Voice of Company, Voice of Channel, or Voice of Customer.  I like to move sequentially from inside to out, comparing perspectives as I go.

START WITH COMPANY

Your internal team will have good thoughts on issues you might want to explore. If nothing else, we should do our homework and check in with a spectrum of internal roles to gain important perspective prior to going outside the company.  You can focus interviews on leadership, certain key areas like sales and marketing, or, depending on your objectives, you might benefit from the thoughts of folks at critical departments like supply chain or manufacturing.

Example: in one of my projects, interviews with company personnel and a review of the website revealed 55 different benefits they believed their service provided.  Yes, 55.  They claimed to have the best quality and service and be the fastest, least expensive and highest tech service option in their industry.  This was good information to have when we moved to external interviews, allowing us to either confirm or shoot down the internal hypotheses.  Spoiler alert:  we settled on 3 benefits in the end.

MOVE ON TO CHANNELS

Once your Voice of Company is complete, you can move out into partner space to conduct Voice of Channel interviews.  Based on your business, you may have a number of channels beyond your direct sales group.  You may have wholesalers, distributors, dealers, reps, retailers or all of the above.  You’ll find different views based on all sorts of factors:  geographic strength of your brand, channel structure, size-power-influence of specific players, value-add services provided by these channels, and type of compensation provided to them.  Channel effectiveness is an ever-changing puzzle that evolves over time.  But remember, it’s a puzzle we can influence – as long as we keep track of the situation and provide the right tools for our partners’ success. 

Example:  channel interviews once allowed me to help a building supply client understand the movement from distributors to big box retailers in their category.  We learned that the channels served different end-user groups depending on whether contractors were buying based on service, brand, convenience or price.  After the study, shifting products and brands allowed my client to increase sales while reducing channel conflict.

THEN ADD CUSTOMERS FOR DEPTH

After Voice of Company and Voice of Channel, we can round out the cube, adding the third and most important dimension, Customers. Your direct customer might be just the tip of the value chain.  Perhaps you sell adhesive to hold the backing on industrial sandpaper, so you sell to the sandpaper manufacturer.  That manufacturer might sell to a distributor, who in turn sells it to the company that uses it to sand down aluminum blade turbines in jet engine repair.

When you have multiple levels in the value chain, keep going!  Don’t stop with your direct customers. Interview your customers’ customers, and their customers, and their customers…all the way to the end user if needed.  That way you can collect an even deeper understanding of the situation, trends, pain points, needs, perceptions and levers to gain share.

Example:  a client in the chemical business made ingredients to coat fabrics used in sports outerwear.  They interviewed their immediate customer who made the fabric, but also interviewed Patagonia, the jacket maker, as well as end users.  They determined a need for a coating with improved moisture wicking coupled with more breathability.  After making the new compound, my client’s revenue and margin improved.  They sold more – at a higher price -  to their immediate customer, who sold more (also at a higher price) to Patagonia.

DON’T FORGET COMPETITORS

If you want to add a fourth dimension, the “C” in VOC could also stand for “competitors.”  In The Growth Gears,  authors Art Saxby and Pete Hayes contend that the all-important “Insights Gear” should involve the company, its customers and also competitors. And, when we look at competitors, don’t look at just the part where we compete, but the whole competitor.  We can discover much through secondary research, but can learn even more at conventions, through field research or even interviewing competitors’ customers. 

Example:  Conducting research at a trade show, we were able to compare and contrast the sales pitches my client’s competitors used in promoting their very similar industrial machinery.  We found out how they sold against us, what they believed their strengths to be and how they leveraged our perceived weaknesses.  We used this information to inform everything from sales literature to website copy and even new product development. 

BETTER STRATEGIES TO COME

Completing the cube will allow you to get more creative about how to solve real problems the market will pay to fix.  You’ll identify things that your competitors missed, don’t hear or can’t obtain.  And armed with that insight, your imagination can lead to true breakthroughs…in products, services, the way you describe your offerings, the way you sell and more. 

So, don’t just check a box when you do VOC, build the box…and then break out of the box.  Make sure you interview people within the company, within your channels, your customers and even your competitors.  Cover all the “C’s” and you can’t go wrong.