VoC Practices Poll Results

Greetings from Chris Halliwell
Here are the results of our latest 3-minute poll of Technology Marketing Center Members, this one on Voice of the Customer practices.  Generally, I was surprised to find quite so high a level of ad hoc use of a tool that I've come to rely on as a highly reliable, structured and unbiased way to get at underlying customer needs.  22 companies responded.

    -- One third of responders use the term Voice of the Customer (VoC) to refer to any ad hoc or structured quantitative or qualitative customer needs research, in other words, as a synonym for "market research"
    -- More than 40% of responders say that marketing is usually responsible for VoC process and practices within their organizations, however, 36% report that no one is responsible for overall VoC process design and improvement
    -- 45% say that VoC projects are mostly staffed with marketing people, while, in a piece of what I consider to be good news, 32% say that VoC projects are usually staffed by cross-functional teams
    -- 68% of responders say that VoC project members are NOT required to attend any sort of formal training in order to execute the process
    -- And finally, no surprise that 63% report VoC projects are kicked off prior to the products requirements definition, or at some point in the product development process; only one respondent reported using VoC primarily to determine market segmentation.

Next quarter we'll take a look at how TMC Members use tools for competitive positioning strategies.