One hundred years ago, the voice of the customer was easily and routinely heard by the shopkeeper. In small towns, the shopkeeper knew everyone. The relationship between the shopkeeper and the customer was long standing and personal. The shopkeeper and the customer were neighbors and had probably gone to the same school together. They lived in the same small town and their children played together. They both rooted for their high school football team on autumn Friday nights. So when the customer walked into the shop, the shopkeeper immediately knows who they were.

Today’s world has gotten much bigger and much more complex. No longer does the store owner personally know everyone who comes into the store. The store is too big, the population is too big and mobile for the same kind of personal relationship with the customer to exist as it once did, and there are lots more people in today’s world. It is simply impossible for the shopkeeper to personally know every customer who walks in the door. And in today’s world, the shop may well be a virtual shop–not a small store front on Main Street but a store on the Internet.

With growth, the march of time, and a changing marketplace, have come advances in technology. There are new technologies today that did not exist in a previous day and age.

It is still as important as it ever was for the store owner to listen to what the customer is saying. But the store owner listens far differently than he/she did a hundred years ago. In particular, there are three important technologies that make it possible to hear and listen to the voice of the customer today:

• The ability to acquire, store, and manage huge amounts of data
• The ability to read and understand text in a computerized environment
• The ability to visualize data so that management can comprehend what is being said by a database

While it is generally recognized by business that it is a good idea to listen to the customer, it is not clear as to how to go about listening to the customer. For all the advances in technology there are still formidable technological and economic challenges. So where is the voice of the customer heard today? The voice of the customer is heard in many places – on paper, on the Internet, through email, in call centers, in warranty claims, over the telephone and in many other places. In today’s world the corporation needs to be able to listen to the customer in all of those places.

This book is a primer on how to go about hearing and listening to the voice of the customer using the technologies that are available today. This book answers important questions such as:

• Where is the voice of the customer heard?
• How does the corporation find and capture the voice of the customer?
• How is the voice of the customer actually interpreted and understood?
• How do you cope with the volume of messages the customer is sending you?
• How do you separate noise from the important messages?
• How do you analyze the composite voice of the customer over thousands of customers?
• How do you reduce the voice of the customer to a visual format that is understood by management?
• How do you know when the message the customer is sending changes?

After reading this book the reader will be able to manage, build, and operate a corporate infrastructure that listens to the voice of the customer.

This book is primarily for the business person–the top manager and the marketing manager. Others that will find this book of value are the sales manager, the finance manager, and other individuals making decisions in the corporation. In addition, the technician and the manager of technology will find this book of value.

This book belongs on the desk of every manager in the corporation who cares about:

• Increasing the revenue of the corporation
• Increasing and holding the market share of the corporation
• Reducing the expenses of the corporation.

As a quick anecdote, several years ago I was invited to speak to the CEO, CIO, and CFO of one of America’s largest retailing corporations. I was given 30 minutes to speak. I was told that I was to talk about business, not technology. I carefully prepared my presentation.

I spoke on three subjects–increasing revenue, expanding your market share, and reducing expenses. At the end of my short presentation, the CEO thanked me for my presentation and said, “Thanks for the presentation, but our corporation just isn’t interested in those kinds of things.”

I came home and asked my wife if we had any stock in the corporation. If we did we needed to sell the stock immediately. It is a good thing because that very large retailer is today going out of business. (This is a true story!)

Of all the critical things a prosperous corporation needs to do, listening to the voice of the customer is at the very top of the list.

There are two ways the voice of the customer is heard: collectively and individually. Collectively, all of the customers of the corporation are heard. Management makes strategic decisions based on the collective voice of the customer. But the voice of the customer can be heard individually as well. On a call by call, interaction by interaction basis, the customer has a conversation with the company. In this case, decisions are made individually but not strategically. The voice of the customer is important in both cases. This book however is about the collective voice of the customer.

So if you are a business person and are interested in increasing revenue and market share and reducing expenses, then this book is for you.

The primary audience for this book is the business person. Having stated that, there are several places where the book takes a technical turn. In today’s business world, the business person who turns his/her back on technology is an anachronism. The marketplace and the future of business are inexorably intertwined with technology. So it is time the businessperson starts to embrace technology.

I have attempted to keep the intrusions of technology in check. I have introduced discussions of technology only when necessary and I have tried to keep discussions of technology at a high comprehensible level.

If a person is going to understand the voice of the customer in today’s world, a person is going to have to understand a little bit about technology, because that is where the voice of the customer is heard today.

No apologies.

WHI, Castle Rock, CO February 2018