The Voice of the Customer Archives

The third perspective of demonstrating measurable progress -- the customer’s -- must not be lost in all the activity of stabilizing and sustaining change. The voice of the customer should be very prominent in the early stages of a change effort. Customer perceptions are often an important reference for the business case for change. The customer’s voice should be no less prominent after the change has been made and you are in the process of stabilizing and sustaining it.

There are two ways to capture the voice of the customer at this point in the change effort - direct and indirect.

Direct methods include surveys and interviews that are described in Methods of Collecting Perceptual Data within Collecting People's Perceptions. Direct methods at this point should be aimed at discerning the customer’s satisfaction with outcomes you believe should have created a different experience for them.
Indirect methods include mining existing sources of data such as retention, new customer subscriptions, revenue per customer, opportunities to up-sell or cross-sell, etc. to determine if the changes are having the intended effect.

Tools

Since people are the ultimate target of change, it is essential that you collect data about their perceptions of the change. Many leaders and managers dismiss people's perceptions as soft data not worth caring about. However, if you are genuinely interested in how well the change is taking hold, people's perceptions are invaluable.

Here are three reliable methods for collecting perceptual data.

Survey – the design and administration of a self-report instrument that allows you to collect the perceptions of many people at once. A survey can include quantitative (numeric) and qualitative (open-ended) questions.
Interview – face-to-face interaction with an individual or a group that permits people to report to you from their own experience. Interviews allow follow-up and probing that questionnaires don’t, but it is difficult to collect and analyze data from a large number of people quickly.
Observation – Here the perceptual data belong to you. It is very useful to devise categories for making observations based on the behavioral targets you’ve established for the change, e.g. cross-functional collaboration, assuming a leadership role in a team, value-based decision-making, adoption of new tools and methods, etc.