As a business owner, your opinion doesn’t matter

By Andrew Ballard, July Workshop Presenter
I’m often asked what I do. My response is always the same, “I help smart business owners understand that their opinion doesn’t matter.” The brutal truth is, unless you are going to write a check to buy all of your own inventory, it’s your customer’s opinion that counts.

Understanding the preferences and perceptions of your customers is arguably the most important business information you can acquire. Research nerds like me refer to this information as “voice of the customer” (VOC). This data not only helps you improve your customers’ experience, it can also expose operation and process improvement opportunities.

There are many other benefits to conducting a VOC study: optimizing and innovating in terms of product development, reducing customer attrition, increasing customer referrals and improving the results from promotion, to name a few. Plus, the data derived from a voice of your customer study can have both top and bottom line impact.

There is an important distinction between a voice of the customer study and a customer survey. A typical customer survey asks a question, registers a response and moves on to the next question. The intent of a voice of the customer study is not to generate a response; it is to generate a conversation, which produces far richer information.

VOC is a qualitative research approach designed to render attitudes, values and the underlying motives that drive consumer behavior. Learning about how customers experience your brand is the best way to capitalize on your strengths and shore up your weaknesses. In my experience, insights from a voice of the customer study, when acted upon, lead to significant improvements in financial performance.

The two primary VOC collection methods are individual in-depth interviews and focus groups (or Customer Advisory Councils).

To conduct a VOC study, you first need to select your sample. A sample is a small representative group of your customer base; typically, your best customers, those you want to replicate. For In-depth interviews your sample would be between 10 and 50 (depending on the size of your customer base). For a Focus Group or Council, you would recruit eight to 12 customers.

Next you’d develop an interview or facilitator’s guide. Unlike a traditional customer survey, a VOC guide includes only six to eight questions (or topics) that guide the conversation between an interviewer and respondent(s).

After getting a response to a question, the interviewer probes by asking “why,” to understand what is behind the response. In voice of the customer studies, the “why” can be even more important than the “what.”

That is the reason VOC studies deliver better information and more actionable results than customer surveys. Many in-depth interviews are scheduled for 30-minutes or more; however, we have found that you can collect solid attitudinal data in a 15-minute interview, and not risk burning out respondents. Most Focus Groups last two-hours.

Lastly, in order to collect candid and unbiased VOC information, it is important to have someone other than the people who interface with your customers conduct the interviews. An experienced interviewer will produce the most reliable and unbiased results.

If you are committed to growing your business, keep in mind that, unless you intend on being your only customer, your opinion doesn’t matter…it’s your customer’s opinion that counts.

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Thanks for the great insight, Andrew!  We will see you all in a couple weeks.  Please visit our events page for more information and to RSVP for this workshop.

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