Common Mistakes in Voice of Customer Implementation

I can't begin to tell you how often I get a call during which the person I'm speaking with says something to the extent of, "I've been running our Voice of the Customer surveys for years and nothing's getting better in those customer relationships." This, of course always results in me asking how they've worked toward changing their people, process and technologies to meet their customers at or above their expectations based on what they learned in that feedback? Surprisingly, the answer is almost always the same, "what do you mean?" Too many CX teams have been lead down the primrose path of overcommitting technology solutions as the magic silver bullet cure-all for all issues with their customers and do not put anywhere enough emphasis on the need to adapt and change, and to meet their customers, where they are, in their respective journeys at those defining moments of service. Indeed, I tell them that an overreliance on tech as that silver bullet is very much the same as an overweight person blaming their bathroom scale for their unhealthy condition. It's not the scale's fault they may overeat and perhaps get too little exercise, and until this changes, the scale won't report anything more optimistic. The moral of this short story is obvious. CX improvement may be powered by the customer's voice, but it is always a change management function. If we do not prepare to change our ways and continue to evolve our organization and how we do what it is we do, we risk not meeting our customers when and where they are looking for us and will indeed continue to disappoint. Ignoring the most basic need for adaptive change is akin to the famous Albert Einstein quote about his definition of insanity: doing the same things the same ways you always have but looking for a different (and presumably better) outcome. The odds, my friends, are against. We need to be willing to change, and in many ways, burn the boats from our past and free ourselves to find new and innovative ways to serve our customers when, where and how it matters to them. Until we do this and fully commit to transformative changes to practically every aspect of our business, we are truly only paying lip service to our customer focus and the experiences we create. It's a gigantic, missed opportunity for so many. Knowing how to change and using state of the art technology as a change enabler will prove to be key in this process. Having the right priorities, focus areas, and direction will have a positive, orchestrative effect and conversely the lack of the right analytics to guide this decision process will leave you sub-optimized or worse, functionally crippled. If I leave you with nothing more here, please consider customer experience as a change management job more so than simply a measurement one. We all need data to make our decisions, true point, but don't assume that just because you have invested in a state of the art NPS program, that this alone will be enough to make an impact.

Most Voice of Customer programs fail within 18 months. Not because of tech. Because they can’t prove business value. I’ve seen it play out too many times. Surveys are running. NPS is tracked. Dashboards look beautiful. But when leadership asks: “So what changed because of this?” Silence. Here’s why most VoC programs stall: → No hard link to revenue or cost savings → Weak executive sponsorship → Siloed ownership across journeys → Insights-to-action gap (findings don’t translate into changes) Without impact, VoC becomes a reporting function. And reporting functions are the first to get cut in a downturn. The fix is not more surveys. It’s not bigger dashboards. It’s building a direct line from insight → action → business outcome. ✔ Show how churn reduced after a fix ✔ Show how complaints dropped after a redesign ✔ Show how revenue grew after removing friction That’s when VoC moves from “nice to have” to “critical to growth.” If you’re running a VoC program today, how do you show its value to your CFO?

We’ve been sold a comforting story: If companies just run surveys, report the top 10 contact reasons, and build dashboards and VoC reports, they’ll magically become customer-centric. But here’s the uncomfortable truth: Most VoC efforts aren’t programs at all. They’re reports. Reports surface problems. Programs solve them. A Voice of the Customer report looks like this:  • Endless dashboards tracking NPS, CSAT, and “top themes”  • Beautiful slide decks shared in leadership meetings  • Emotional stories to “humanize the data” But then what? No prioritization. No action plans. No accountability. The result? Customers keep churning. The same issues flood support channels quarter after quarter. Teams stay busy analyzing but disconnected from impact. A real Voice of the Customer program is different. It’s designed to:  • Connect feedback directly to churn, revenue, and cost drivers  • Prioritize issues with the highest business impact  • Assign owners, set timelines, and track progress across teams Because customers don’t care how many insights you surface. They care what you do about their pain. Next: I’ll break down why VoC meetings—where most of these insights are shared—fail to turn visibility into action.