"You can observe a lot just by watching." | ||
| --Yogi Berra | ||
In the previous chapter, we outlined the various tools and processes one should undertake before embarking on a Voice of the Customer (VoC) journey. In this chapter, we will focus on the various additional strategies and tools available to the marketer to do effective VoC. While I find that there are certain tools I would not do a VoC without, I am presenting a variety of VoC tools in this chapter to allow the reader to decide which method(s) would work best for his or her particular situation. I recommend that you consider using multiple tools to conduct your research, as often differing tools give differing views of the customer. As Abbie Griffin, an NPD practitioner who also did early VoC research, has stated in the past, "the best do not succeed by using just one NPD practice more extensively or better, but by using a number of them more effectively simultaneously."
In the previous chapter, we discussed how VoC could be used throughout the development process. At a high level, we can consider VoC being deployed during three main phases of product development—the Discovery phase, the Definition phase, and the Evaluation phase. When we are dealing with the "fuzzy front end" of a customer problem, we don't really have the new product concept or solution imagined quite yet. We are conducting research in the market to understand what types of problems our customers face and how we might be able to develop a product to satisfy their needs. This is when we would use a Discovery phase project. When we have already developed a product concept, but we are still fleshing out specific details and functions to add to our product or solution to best satisfy the customer needs, we would undertake a Definition phase project. If we have already fully developed our product and have defined the detailed design, and we are trying to understand the best way to launch our product and which marketing strategies and tactics we should use, we would deploy an Evaluation phase project.
To provide a little more context, I'd like to delve a little deeper into each of these phases and discuss typical VoC methods deployed in each of the three phases. Keep in mind, these are recommendations for which VoC tools typically work best in each phase, but the list is not absolute, and you may find a need to use a tool in a different phase than that which is listed.
During the discovery phase, the marketer is conducting high-level, open-ended exploratory research in an effort to learn about the customer's methods, culture, and unarticulated needs. This is the type of research that typically generates breakthrough or innovative products as there is not as much of a preconceived product concept, or if there is, it is still possible for existing product concepts to morph considerably as there is minimal capital investment in the new product or service you are researching. Typical VoC collection methods deployed in this phase include:
- Focus groups
- Customer visit interviews (open-ended)
- Ethnographical research
- Lead-user analysis
Interaction through interviews, focus groups, and ethnological research are the main tools the researcher has for the first, and I would argue the most important, phase of a customer VoC as part of the discovery research. If your budget or time do not allow you to use multiple methods in this phase, it is well advised that the researcher should use a combination of interviews in conjunction with some degree of ethnographical research as this will likely yield the deepest insights to your customer needs.
When we already have a product concept, but we need to make the necessary tradeoffs about which functions the product will perform and at what cost to the organization, we will do definitional research. In this phase, we focus on the specific uses and features of the product to meet the goals of the customer. We begin to understand the value of the functions and features we are putting into our product in an effort to determine which are must have functions that the customer will ultimately pay for and which are the nice-to-have functions that do not impact the buying decision nearly as much. Typical VoC research methods deployed in this phase include:
- Interviews (more structured than in the Discovery phase)
- Ethnography
- Lead user analysis
- Customer advisory board
- Conjoint analysis
In the case where you already have a working prototype or product, and you wish to understand how well the product features meet the customer's needs, the usability of the product from the customer's perspective, or how best to launch the product or create the marketing strategy around a product launch, you will want to deploy evaluation research. Quite often, this is carried out at the end of the product development just before launch. Some of the VoC tools available to you in the Evaluation phase include:
- Focus groups
- Surveys
- Feedback interviews, including usability testing
To better understand each of the tools that we have outlined earlier in each phase, the bulk of this chapter will provide a description of each method, the value gained from each method, potential downsides of each method, and some thoughts about how best to use each one. In later chapters, we will spend considerable time putting many of these key VoC methods into practical use.