Chapter 5: Sense and Respond to Customers, Now and in the Future Get started: Embed customer listening in your business Before you commit to too many changes, ask yourself 1. Create a voice-of-the-customer function. plan future products or programs at an offsite or and your peers: What stories are our customers telling The right program will have both business-focused every Monday morning? Wherever planning takes us? Have we listened deeply to customer feedback research leaders and a neutral reporting structure. place, save a seat at the table for the customer’s recently? Embed customer listening into your That way, the team responsible for delivering voice. company’s DNA to ensure transformation efforts are improvements isn’t also keeping score. Get feedback hyper-focused on their needs. from customers to establish a baseline and set a 5. Invest in intelligence and automation to drive single improvement goal as your starting point. accountability. Automating analysis and reporting To prioritize where to ignite change, it’s best to get an saves your team valuable time. A sensing tool or understanding of top needs for each customer 2. Invest in listening at every level. Target all machine layered on top of your qualitative feedback persona. Here are some of the best practices personas in your ecosystem. Which customer groups is one of the most effective ways to unlock insights. Salesforce follows: experience the most pain? Which drive the most revenue? Who are your greatest brand advocates? 6. Inspire a customer listening movement. Don’t fear their feedback. Sometimes the team sharing customer feedback is perceived as the “bad news” team. Instead, motivate Success metrics Brand & product ROI benchmarks awareness 3. Integrate insights into one narrative. your team and your stakeholders to stay engaged Tell one story behind the numbers. Just as and keep acting on customers’ needs by recognizing you want to balance your listening across results and rewarding teams that become listening channels, you want to balance your data champions. with a story. Listening tours, advisory boards, and focus groups bring color and 7. Close the loop with your customers. Listening Competitive context to scorecards and trend lines. means you need to communicate. It’s unrealistic Product benchmarking innovation to take action on every piece of feedback, and 4. Operationalize insight reviews. customers don’t expect you to do everything they Integrate customers into strategic planning, ask. But they do expect to hear back from you on and assign an accountable owner to each metric what you are doing, what you’re not able to do, GTM, pricing, & packaging or measurement that stems from what you and what else you need from them for a learned when listening. Does the executive team successful partnership. 18 The Customer 360 Playbook