Businesses sell one of two things – product or service, or both.  To survive and succeed, there has to be someone buying what is being sold, the customer.  However, too often companies are not hearing the voice of the customer, which results in poor or zero sales.  With this, the company is quickly out of business!  It is truly that simple – there has to be customers for there to be a business and vice versa.

The number one thing any business needs to learn is that hearing the voice of the customer is what will make that company succeed or fail – period.  Too often, business owners will continue working from their own agenda, believing they know best what the customer needs or wants.  Then, when sales begin to decline and customer complaints mount, they cannot figure out what went wrong.  The bottom line is that not only do customers need to be listened to, they need to be heard.

Great leaders are great listeners.  This one aspect of business is vital and some of the ways in which a business owner can start hearing the voice of the customer is by:

• Ask specific questions of both customers and employees
• Take the responses from those questions seriously
• Take action immediately to correct or change processes or policies based on the customer and employee response
• Create short and long-term strategies for staying on top of customer/employee input
• Make sure employees are empowered with the right tools and resources to address potential customer complaint

What business owners need to realize is that hearing the voice of the customer is not a negative thing but an opportunity.  Of course, no person likes to hear that they are failing but companies should be ecstatic that customers are sharing information that will lead to change.  Without this input, profit is going to crash but with the input, profit will increase.

Interestingly, a number of studies have been performed specific to hearing the voice of the customer with great results.  These studies show that complaints coming from customers come from three places:

1. The Company
2. An Employee
3. The Customer

As much as 80% of complaints come from the employee and customer.  Therefore, if a business owner can find ways of listening better and then improving on products and/or services based on the information received, they will see two things happen.  First, the company will have a much happier customer and second, employee morale will go way up, which results in better productivity and customer support.

One of the common complaints when hearing the voice of the customer has to do with the way in which a situation was handled by a particular employee.  Look, businesses today are complex.  Most are operating at supersonic speed and with tough technology.  To keep to budgets, most companies work with as little staff as possible, which often puts a tremendous strain on a person.  Then when a difficult or demanding customer is put in the mix, things can become quite difficult.

Instead of being defensive, hearing the voice of the customer is a beautiful opportunity to isolate a problem, one that could likely be corrected.  It might simply mean that that employee needs different or more training, he or she does not have access to the right tools or resources to do the job, or that perhaps the individual is not right for the position.  Regardless, knowing there is a problem allows the owner or upper management to take the appropriate action to correct the problem.

Another area in which customers complain has to do directly with what the company is offering, the product and/or service.  It could be something as simple as tweaking or it might be a defect in design, a problem with the distribution process, or even pricing.  Regardless, by hearing the voice of the customer, again changes can be made to make the product and/or service more palatable to the customer.

Finally, the customer can also be part of the equation.  Typically, customers create many of the problems heard.  Most often, this comes from the customer’s lack of education pertaining to what the business sells or does.  However, by hearing the voice of the customer, the company has a great avenue for education.  For instance, sending customers a questionnaire would help the business owner identify misconceptions that could then be addressed, problem solved.

Many times, hearing the voice of the customer is hard.  After all, business owners like to think they have everything under control according to their design or vision.  However, being open to criticism allows change, possibly for an easier, better, or more seamless way of doing things.  Taking this approach is truly the key to being successful in today’s competitive market.