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Voice of the customer: the master's voice

29-May-2007

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By Neil Davey, editor

The voice of the customer has changed. It is persistent, it is focused, and where it once often fell on deaf ears, now there is a willing audience. If it was Joe Pasquale before, it's James Earl Jones now.

Partly this is because the internet has provided a platform whereby a consumer – whether pleased or aggrieved – can share his thoughts to an online community of thousands (or hundreds of thousands) in a matter of seconds.

But this has also gone hand in hand with the public's growing appetite for consumer feedback and experiences. Entire websites have been built solely for the purpose of sharing customer experiences, such as ciao.co.uk. And this growing audience has only served to further encourage consumers to share their thoughts. It’s a self-sufficient process that shows no signs of slowing down.

What does this mean for companies? On the downside, businesses have good reason to fear this new branch of social networking as sites such as NThellworld.co.uk and easyjetcomplaints.blogspot.com have created entire communities devoted to attacking specific firms. Negative experiences can be shared and campaigns can be rapidly created, organised and mobilised.

But there are far more plus points than negative points. For those firms that choose not to hide under the bed sheets and hope it all goes away, there is a whole world of opportunities being created.

The swell in social networking platforms means that there are more customer touchpoints for savvy marketers, and viral marketing has never been in such rude health thanks to the likes of MySpace.com and YouTube. Customer advocacy has never been such an important strategy and again, the Web 2.0 phenomenon means that for businesses that are championed by the consumer, the future is unbelievably bright. Furthermore, these platforms have enabled firms to use communities as practices and generate customer co-created products, with firms leveraging social networks to tap into the expert knowledge of their client base.

Over the coming weeks we will be taking an extensive look at the voice of the customer phenomenon. Social networks, Web 2.0, customer advocacy, word of mouth, voice of the customer research and co-creation will all come under the spotlight. We will discuss why these fields are important to your business and showcase leading-edge examples of those companies that are pioneering the use of these platforms.

But first up we bring you our expert overview reports. Jennifer Kirkby serves up a strategic look at how businesses can use or abuse the voice of the customer, whilst Stuart Lauchlan looks at the technologies and platforms that can be applied to best listen to customer communities.

Voice of the customer – will your company be one of those hiding from it? Or tuning in?


This month's stories:

Social networking

Is my Facebook bovvered - could social networking help your business?

The slog of the blog: social networking for businesses

Who are the customer champions?

Customer research

Customer research strategies: is familiarity breeding contempt?

Voice of the customer research: let your customers do the talking

Satisfaction not guaranteed: is it time to rethink complaints management?


Word of mouth

Everybody's talking: how to harness word of mouth marketing

"Whassup with the sales?" The challenges of viral marketing

Customer blogs: the lone nut theory debunked


Customer communities

Avoid the risks of customer-driven innovation

Customer communities: A two-way street

Who’s buying the ‘customer-created’ concept?


MyCustomer.com  29-May-2007
Story read 6024 times

User Comments: 1

The Immunity Challenge doesn't just want their 'voice', we want THEM!

Michael Davis  06-Jun-2007 @ 08:56AM
   
Having spent years around CRM and 'customer-centric' approaches, I became increasingly aware that customer-centricity was still something companies "did to" customers. Voice of the customer was often asked for just to validate what was already decided in many cases.

The approach we're taking at www.the immunitychallenge.com is to invite the knowledgeable consumer into the"virtual boardroom" to actually brand our product. After all, who should know better how to speak to consumers about our client's new immune product... than consumers! The more we developed the new concept, the more arrogant the old approach of sitting in the backroom deciding what millions of consumers thought seemed! I believe that within a few years, we'll wonder what the heck we were thinking when we used to do all this marketing "to consumers", without actually talking to them. (Come to think of it... sounds pretty odd already)! Michael Davis, Rhino Marketing Inc.