Congratulations, your team executed Voice of Customer Interviews…Now What?

Developing a strategy without gathering customer insights is “strategy malpractice.” Yet far too many organizations build strategies from the inside out and do not gather insights from their customers and markets. ( That is why I wrote my book Voice of Customer, a No Smoke and Mirrors Approach to Driving Profitable Growth)

Companies often launch new products and services and strategic plans based on what they believe they know and have always known about their customers and markets.

When this occurs, sales fail to deliver the planned sales and profit growth. Several organizations went into 2024 with what they felt were strong sales forecasts and sales pipelines, only to miss January sales goals.

Companies that consistently meet and exceed sales and profit targets have an intimate knowledge of their customers, markets, and challenges their customers face today.

You must gather customer insights if your company wants to be a market leader and scale revenue.

For the select few who interviewed their customers, inactive customers, and prospects they quoted but did not win….now what?

As we share with clients… there are dollars in your data if you know where to look.

Transaction data, market data, and gathering the voice of your customers are critical to profitably scaling revenue today.

You gathered the insights from your customers and found several insights…

• What customers are satisfied and who is not?

• Who are raving fans and promoters, and who are detractors or customers so unhappy they are preparing to defect?

• Why do Customers buy from you?

• Why don’t customers buy from you?

• What is your share of your wallet?

• How are your customers’ businesses doing?

• How critical is the salesperson’s skills and market knowledge when they make buying decisions?

• What do your customers believe their growth this year will be?  

• What keywords and phrases are your customers and prospects using to search for solutions like yours?

• What is the value your product or service is delivering, and how do they describe it?

• What should you Keep, Start, and Stop Doing?

• What are some new challenges and struggles your customers are facing today?

What should your team do next?

                                           Act!

It is critical to your team’s revenue growth, customer relationships, and the ability to gather future insights from your customers that you act after conducting voice of customer research.

We suggest, at a minimum, the below steps.

1. Share findings with senior leaders of your organization
2. Have your leaders share the insights with their teams.
3. Share key insights with sales, marketing, and customer service teams.
4. Marketing produces content that shares what the company learned and what your team plans to do.
5. Share content with everyone who participated in the interviews and thank them for being a part of your commitment to continuously improving the relationship with your customers.
6. Train sales on how to use the data. NEVER give sales the customer interview data file without training them on how to approach customers who are not satisfied, are detractors, or are preparing to defect.
7. Engage with the inactive accounts and design account growth plans.
8. Strategically engage with all the large customers who scored low on Net Promotor Score and or customer Satisfaction (who contribute to 80% of your net income) and, using the sales training, conduct professional discovery calls to learn more and develop a plan to improve.
9. Contact customers who chose not to participate. Customers who choose not to participate often lack a close relationship with your company and or are detractors who are unhappy and may be planning to defect.
10. Conduct contact list hygiene. Often, after we have tried to interview customers in companies’ contact customer databases, we discover errors. Some of the contact databases we have received over the years have as high and 40% inaccurate customer contact information. If the team conducting voice-of-customer interviews found inaccurate data, we must update the account records.
11. Meet with each key account personally, share what your company learned overall, and then develop key account plans to gain a greater share of the wallet.
12. Segment insights into three to five categories and assign leaders to develop improvement plans for each.( Sales skills, Service, Communication…)

We recommend teams act and engage with their current customers, inactive customers, and customers we quoted but did not win within 30 days.

We serve dynamic and uncertain markets.

Market-leading teams quickly turn the insights from Voice of Customer interviews into actionable plans.

We often help teams shape strategies and tactics and update value-based messaging based on the voice of customer insights.

The key is not to wait sixty or ninety days to act.

Let’s schedule a call if you want to discuss gathering actionable insights from your customers and developing strategic plans to scale your revenue and profits.