Often when a company talks about “listening” to customers, that notion is immediately collapsed into a “voice of the customer” (VOC) program. This is not the action I am referring to with the aptitude “make them listen.”
Your job is to take customers off the spread sheets and survey results to advance a conversation within your organization about the lives of your customers – their experiences – and who they are. Think of “make them listen” as “make customers human.”
This means finding new and disruptive ways to engage your executives and the ranks of your company. Make them want to hear the customers’ words and listen to what is going on in your customers’ lives.
CX leaders translate customer data into compelling, disruptive and engaging nuggets of information. You need to make executives and associates to want to know more about customers.
The best and beloved companies engage their associates. A few examples of engagement:
• Starting every new hire in the marketplace working the frontline or in the warehouse
• Requiring executives to go out and fill orders during the holidays
• Doing monthly huddles – executives with the frontlines in a transparent “fireside” chat
• Calling lost customers to understand what happened…and to apologize
These types of activities put the voice of the customer in the ear of the organization. They create empathy and a culture of associates who care about what they sell and the customers’ lives who they impact. This grows a different type of company and also helps you with building executive engagement and the passionate direction that separates a beloved company from an “everyday” company.
