Learn all about Voice of the Customer

Enjoy the full Transcript of the Video

SPEAKERS
Jonathan Greenwood, Taylor Fitzpatrick

Taylor Fitzpatrick  00:05
Hey, Jonathan, welcome to our CX Coffee Chat

Jonathan Greenwood  00:09
or have a tea chat for me.

Taylor Fitzpatrick  00:12
That's fair across the pond, I get it one day I might venture on your side of the world. But today, it's coffee. I would love for you to introduce yourself, just do a quick little intro to folks who might not know you. And then I have some questions for you. Yeah,

Jonathan Greenwood  00:29
yeah, great. So I'm Jonathan. I'm a consultant with M Corp. CX. I've been consulting for about, I don't know, six or seven years. And our time goes really fast. And I lost track of it. But I worked for a long time for a big international company doing an engineering company and a lot of stuff in there. One of the things I did my last mission in there basically was leading the global voice of customer program. And so I decided to help other companies benefit from some of the experiences I had.

Taylor Fitzpatrick  01:02
I love that perfect segue because I'm curious, like, why talk to me a little bit about Voc? Like, what is it? Why is it important? We kind of hear a lot about metrics and measurement and things. But I'm, I'm curious to learn a little bit more there.

Jonathan Greenwood  01:14
Yeah. laughs people call it different things. But I've most commonly and recently had a call voice of customers from telecom listening systems or customer experience measurement, like you say, Yeah, I think, you know, is an important, it's an interesting question, because for me, it always seemed really obvious that it was clearly the most important thing you had to, you know, you can't do anything without knowing what you know, it's, he was the Alice in Wonderland, you know, what should I do next, you know, depends where you want to get to, and where you want to get to his great CX. And so, you know, it's all about listening to customers, or increasingly employees, or partners, or suppliers, you know, whoever listening to people understanding what it was the tell, they've told you analyzing that, and then acting on the feedback. And for me, that, that that idea of continuous improvement is really at the heart of, you're going to start somewhere of all the things you can do, figuring out where you're at right now, it seems like a good place to start. So

Taylor Fitzpatrick  02:19
yeah, I mean, our GPS always has this at least start with or where we're at, to try to figure out where we're gonna go. So it does feel like in business, probably a good plan to. Oh, I love that. So in your experience, like, as you kind of think about you mentioned, it seems like it's, you know, it's the most important thing, it feels really obvious it Well, to me, that seems that then there must be things that people get wrong, that like maybe they don't believe that, or maybe when they do start to try it, they kind of stumble and fall a little bit. So there are some common things that people do wrong, when they're starting to think about Voc that we could, you know, work? Yeah,

Jonathan Greenwood  02:53
that's a good question. I think that it's an interesting, that's an interesting question, because you execute the process. But you have to, first of all, you have to make it systematic, you know, it's not it's a, it's a programmatic approach. So it's quite, it has some as simple as it sounds, there's some as you get into it, there's some complexity, and you have to get it into a system. So you're continuously sensing and responding to what sort of feedback from, from your customers about what they think and feel about what it is you're doing for them. And very, and you run that, you know, logically with you draw it, you know, you listen and analyze and act. So I think a lot of companies sort of over index and on the listening piece, they get wrapped up around the over precision on the, you know, and religious discussions about the questions and the scales and the response scales and all that kind of stuff. And I think they run out of energy to ultimately act on what it is that they've heard. And the reality of this boisar customer approach is, you know, return on investment value for the business only comes when you change something about the way the business is running, it's when you act as that's the that's the moment you get the return. And so I think the big for me, the biggest thing that came to mind, when you talked about this, you know, what, uh, one of the traps is you, you execute the process forward, but you have to design it backwards. So you have to start with, how am I going to mobilize? What do I need to put in place to mobilize the organization to do something, you know, who needs to do what, and then you can figure out well, what information and data are they likely to need? And then you can figure out how am I going to go and get that data? And then and then of course, you you run it and improve it over time. But yeah, that was the first obvious one that came to me.

Taylor Fitzpatrick  04:48
I love that it's such a counter way to think about it because I think even in you know, yeah, companies I've been a part of we've definitely wanted to listen so it's like it that survey Yeah. otter, get that you know, make sure that you have your intercepts on the website or make sure that you have a space to get the data. And then it goes into this weird vortex of data. And you're not, they're not pulling the pieces of the story together, or it just, you know, it maybe comes around once a year and like an annual report or something, but they're like, here's what people are thinking.

Jonathan Greenwood  05:22
idea. Yeah, thanks, mate, you have something really interesting then, which is that you thought about putting the story together? I think you said something like that, because that's another area, I think, where people fall into a kind of trap. Because it is a question of storytelling, you know, I think you can get swamped with data, and information and metrics and KPIs, and it's a bit overwhelming. And the, the thing really is how do you link things together to tell a story of business value, and its business abilities, business value creation, that you're trying to establish that, you know, I do this as a business. And so customers think and feel a certain way about what we did for them. And then they behave in a certain way based on what they think and feel, and the way they behave is valuable or not to the enterprise, you know, they stay or go based on the experiences they have. So I think another trap is or what companies get it wrong is they tend to analyze data in layers, if you think of metrics and data, and the information you get from voc is like a layer cake. You know, my operations data, my customer perception data, my customer behavior, data, the outcome data, and people are typically responsible, I'm responsible for listening, I'm responsible for operations, I'm responsible for, you know, analytics or whatever. And you don't eat the cake, layer by layer, you eat the cake, slice by slice, and you have to think of the you know, the customer journey is the cake and what is everything I know about this part of the journey? And then what then, and then, you know, so that's, that's the other thing. It's, you know, don't don't, you know, people should avoid working on data by just because of the source of it. You know, you've got to you got to collate things together to tell that story, as you said,

Taylor Fitzpatrick  07:06
Oh, I love that I may never look at cake the same. It's awesome. I know, a few more minutes of your time. So just have one last question. You've kind of already given a few. But if there are any, like tips or tricks you have, for folks who are looking to kind of start a voc program, or you know, enhance their voc program, what are some of those tips that you would give them?

Jonathan Greenwood  07:28
That's a good question as well, you flickery questions? I think the, you know, obviously, yeah, some of the tips are Don't, don't fall into traps. But if we think about some other topics, maybe I think that what's critical is for people is to, I had a quote, once in my early career about, you know, think big, start small, scale faster, something like that. And I think what's important in the beginning, is to demonstrate the value of what it is you're trying to do, because it's much easier to convince everyone else to follow you, if you can, can prove the can prove the value. You know, and typically, as CX practitioners, we're very often, you know, we were in a meeting earlier with one of our colleagues who said, I'm talking to Mr. X, and he's a, he's a CX team of one, you know, and how many times have we heard that. And so, if you're by yourself, then you're not going to, you know, you're not going to be with the enterprise. So you have to bring people with you. And, and, and so I think it's, you know, pick a, pick a part of the business, don't try and boil the ocean, pick apart the business, establish that story, prove that if teams work on customer feedback, and deliver new experiences, that your results improve, and then you'll be able to, to really, you know, bring people with you. And linked to that, I suppose, also is the, it's also like, another sort of trap is don't get what you should find people are willing to work with you. You know, very often in businesses, you say, Oh, that's a really important part of the company, we've got to convince them and then, you know, usually they're the biggest bits, the companies, they don't want to, they don't want to do anything with you, because who's this random person. So you know, you got to, you gotta build your coalition of the willing. And, you know, and then prove value. And then you know, it should be won't be easy, but it should be straightforward. From from there on.

Taylor Fitzpatrick  09:24
I love that coalition of the willing will be my next band name. So if I ever have a band and I think those are really great tips are then I appreciate your time. Is there anything else that we want to make sure that folks know about Voc before we take our coffee and tea and dive into the rest of our day?

Jonathan Greenwood  09:44
Anything else about reciprocal Can I sort of quoted the day that I was looking back through some some material and it links back to what we said the beginning backwards voc important and it was down I think it was Deming who said Without data, you're just another person with an opinion. You know, if you've got the customer in your pocket via the voice of customer, then it's much easier to mobilize the organization. It's, you know, you're it's, you know, it helped to close that gap between what people in the business think is important versus what customers think is important, and so on. So, yeah, don't be just don't be just another person with an opinion. Be someone with some data.

Taylor Fitzpatrick  10:28
I love that with that Mic drop. So much, Jonathan. I really appreciate it. This is an amazing coffee chat. I know I've learned something and I hope the folks who've joined us will have will have as well.

Jonathan Greenwood  10:42
Great. So the expectation is

Taylor Fitzpatrick  10:46
all right, we'll talk again soon. See you soon.