The voice of the customer

- No one becomes a quality leader without listening to the customer, so you'll want to make sure that you look at what they want from your products and services. We call this the voice of the customer, which expresses what the customer wants in their own words. The first step in creating a voice of the customer program is to gather information directly from your customers. Lots of companies conduct surveys after the sale to determine if they're meeting customer requirements. Restaurants and department stores sometimes offer incentives to complete an online survey within 24 hours. Your sales staff is also a really good source of information since they deal directly with the customer during and sometimes after the sale. Once you collect the data, the next step is to analyze it. What are the major complaints? And just as important, what things does a customer like? You want to make sure you keep those features in your product or service. Also look for trends. For example, when customers complain about late deliveries, is it usually at the end of the month? The problem might not be with your trucking company, it could be an issue on how orders are processed. The most important step is to take action. And you should act in a timely manner. If there's an issue, you want to fix that problem right away. And if something is going right, you want to make sure you emphasize this to the people who are designing your products, improving your processes and delivering your services. You want to keep those high quality features. You also want to continuously monitor your results. You should track the results of any changes you make by asking the customers specific questions about those changes and analyzing that new information. Some companies take this program a step further to what is called the heart of the customer. The difference is in how you gather data from your customers. With this program, the company doesn't ask the customer, they directly observe how customers are using the product. The American company, Proctor & Gamble, is an expert in this method. Years ago, they observed that customers in some markets so those customers didn't wash their clothes as often and therefore didn't use as much laundry detergent as customers in, say North America or Europe. So for these customers specifically, Proctor & Gamble developed a new laundry detergent that cleaned clothes with cold water and sales in those markets increased. Today, cold water detergent is very popular because it's more friendly to the environment. But that wasn't Proctor & Gamble's goal, they just wanted to sell more laundry soap and they were able to do that because they understood the needs of their customers. Your company can do that too. Gather data directly from your customers, carefully analyze that data and take appropriate actions. Monitor the results by continuously gathering more information. It's a good way to ensure you are delivering the quality your customers expect. the quality your customers expect.