What drives your new product pipeline — projects that keep up with the competition, or ones that put you ahead?
To design better products, you need to really know your customer. B2B companies have the advantage of a smaller more educated buyer group, and should understand that group on an even deeper level than B2C organizations. This means doing more than trade show chats, NPS surveys and sales presentations. Continuous understanding of customer processes, problems, and priorities is done through gathering the Voice of the Customer.
Voice of the customer (VoC) is the process of gathering in-depth insight. While you should also utilize data and surveys, my preferred tactic when developing new products is customer interviews. When you ask customers what they want, the answer is often limited to available technology and you aren’t the only seller hearing it. But, when you ask customers what their problems are and then probe deeper, you can develop new, innovative solutions to those problems.
I did dozens of Voice of the Customer interviews as a Marketing Manager for a Fortune 500 company and learned a few lessons along the way. If you are ready to implement your own VoC process, here are 5 tips on how to make your customer interviews more effective.
1. Do it in person
While I have conducted customer interviews over the phone, the quality of results just isn’t the same. There are a many benefits to an in person interview including:
- Getting a tour — often you can get a tour of the customer’s facility during your visit which can help tremendously as you discuss their needs and issues
- Showing customers you are serious — the fact that you took time to visit in person and perhaps even bought a plane ticket shows your commitment to understanding their needs. This builds on the relationship and the customer is less likely to cancel the meeting when they get busy.
- Less technical difficulties — while virtual meetings have come a long way, I have yet to be in one where everything ran smoothly. Using video can bring back the nonverbal communication you would miss over the phone, but carries significant risk that you will have technology issues that derail the discussion.
2. Don’t “lead the witness”
You want to keep yourself open to hearing about your customer’s problems and needs, not trying to work out solutions during the interview. Use open ended questions, make sure your customer is doing most of the talking, and avoid bringing up a topic of interest for as long as you can. If they bring up a topic organically it means it really matters to them. If you ask “would you like to see wireless connectivity on that device”? Your customer will undoubtedly say “yes!” — but will they pay for it when you launch?
If there are specifics I want to get into with a customer that relate to a new product, I like to save them until later in the interview. Keep your discussion as broad as you can, then narrow down later.
3. Don’t invite your sales team
This one is usually a touchy conversation. Your sales team has built great relationships with key customers and is a go-to source for feedback. You will be tempted to ask them to help you set up VoC interviews.
However, my advice here is to look for a way to, respectfully, set up customer interview teams that don’t include the sales team. Having a salesperson set up or attend a customer interview can affect what you come away with for a couple of reasons:
- It will always feel like a sales call — your customer listens to a lot of presentations, and if your sales rep attends, it will feel like a normal sales call. When I first started doing VoC interviews, I asked a salesperson to help me set some up since he had great relationships with the customers. I wrote up a detailed script to help prep the customer who said she understood. When we got into the meeting and started the interview the customer stopped me and said “Oh, I thought you were coming in here to present a new product to us — I called in all of my engineers”. Cue the red face.
- It can unintentionally stifle wishful thinking — your sales team is trained to sell the portfolio you have, not necessarily to look out for unmet customer needs that you are a year away from being able to address. I remember being in a customer interview with a sales leader in the room. The customer was talking about what they wanted to see in a product. I was excitedly taking notes when the sales leader interrupted with “oh, we already have that! It is that new product I told you about and it can do that [what you just mentioned].” And just like that, the conversation thread died.
4. Don’t only talk to customers who like you
Bill Gates once said “Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning”. While it might be tempting to go talk to those customers who buy the most from you, the most important criteria for a target VoC customer is that they are representative of the market you wish to dominate. Often you can learn the most from someone who for whatever reason has not bought from you in the past. Even better is a customer who used to buy from you but has cut spending — you can get some insight into why.
5. Debrief asap with your team
When doing customer interviews it is best to have at least 2 people — there is often a lot of information coming your way and it can be tough to ask questions and take notes properly. In my experience, I typically brought along an engineer or application specialist as the discussions often got above my technical knowledge. Even with two people taking notes, those notes may not make much sense the next day, let alone later in the week. It is a best practice to sit down and round out your notes with additional context before you forget what you meant when you wrote “hates when she has to stock extras”!
After the immediate debrief, it is best to summarize your notes and share with all stakeholders. Ask managers to take the feedback you gather and talk with their teams about how their role specifically helps the company meet these customer needs. Customer insights are for everyone!
I hope these tips will help you have better conversations. VoC interviews with customers have yielded countless insights that surveys never would have told me. If you haven’t checked in with your customers in a while, ask them to spend some time helping you better understand their problems. I think you will be pleasantly surprised how eager people are to share.
