Who is Listening to Your Customer?

Often when a company talks about 'listening' to customers, that notion is immediately collapsed into a 'voice of the customer' program. That is not the action I am referring to. Customer listening is a critical competency of customer experience reliability.

Customer listening requires this:

• Taking customers off the spread sheets and survey results
• Advancing conversations within your organization about your customers – talk about customer experiences and know who they really are

This means finding new and disruptive ways to engage your executives and the ranks of your company to hear your customers’ words.

The best companies (beloved and advocated by customers) proactively engage their employees and their customers.

• Calling lost customers to understand what happened and to apologize
• Requiring every new hire to interact with customers, such as working the front-line or in the warehouse
• Holding monthly huddles – executives with the front-lines in a transparent 'fireside' chat

These types of activities put the voice of the customer in the ear of the organization. They create empathy and a culture of people who care not just about what they sell, but about the lives of the people who they impact. This behavior grows a different type of company. It helps you build executive engagement and the passionate direction that separates a beloved company from an 'everyday' company.