A favorite way to gain Voice of the Customer (VOC) for new and derivative products is to have engineers visit key customers. Let me be clear up front: I’m not knocking the need to interact with customers in their environment and learn from them, and it’s helpful for those developing solutions to better understand and connect with end users. My issue is that many B2B companies rely too heavily on a few interactions between engineers and customers, and they use this narrow input to justify products, to determine key product-related attributes, and to gauge overall market acceptance. Here’s why this is really dangerous:
- Putting the cart ahead of the horse. Often the understanding of customer environment and needs analysis isn’t actually performed by product engineers. Instead, the discussion between the customer and the product engineer leaps headlong into a review of the solution and how it will benefit the customer – in other words, not gathering information, but selling a preconceived idea.
- Biased data collection. Because product engineers are not trained in proper data collection protocols, bias is introduced by the engineer – in terms of what is asked, how it is asked, and what data are actually recorded – compared to other sampling methods delivered by professional researchers.
- Lack of listening and objectivity. How objective do you think the engineer is going to be to alternative viewpoints from the customer? How effective will a product engineer be in relaying dissenting views to the internal product team?
- Over-generalizing narrow input to a broad market. Rarely is a product designed just for one customer. So, how are the products attributes based on these engineering field trips and a sampling of a few interactions going to be received by a broader market?
- Over-attention to Technical features. Getting the technical viability right is only a part of the solution set in making the product easy to buy. Technical feasibility is often straightforward compared to commercial viability.
Engineers acting in the name of collecting Voice of the Customer are almost always well-intended, but beware of the limitations. We regularly see technology companies using these engineer field trips as the centerpiece of VOC for finalizing the solution set. I have a client that has been developing a new product platform since 2001, and has had many changes and reversals in the development and needs delivery process. It’s no wonder why: they’ve never actually talked to customers to reconcile the gap between their lack of market success and the technical roadmap. So a product that was due out in 2004 as an update to a 10 year old platform still hasn’t been commercialized. They have invested about 120 engineering person years since the project started. Besides the lost time, there is their on-going lack of a presence in the market, and huge revenue shortfalls because they are continuing to sell a tired-old product platform that doesn’t compete. The opportunity cost in this case is in the hundreds of millions of dollars, which is staggering.
So why haven’t they invested in effective market research? Because they see themselves as technology leaders who can effectively impute customer needs. While we’ve enjoyed a great relationship with this client in many other areas of their business, it’s been difficult to get this headstrong organization to see the value in effective voice of the customer. Do you think for one minute that Apple and 3M would make these kinds of colossal mistakes? Is your organization so inwardly-focused that you can’t step back and see the logic of using better alternative ways to generate results?
Another lesson learned here is that, in organizations in which Product Management resides in R&D, product features and functions may be locked-in before Marketing can influence them. To avoid this, I recommend that the Product Development organization has a line item in their budget for gathering effective Voice of the Customer for new product introductions using third-party researchers. While the budget often resides in Marketing, Marketing-led VOC may be too late as most of the solution set may be baked before Marketing gets involved.