“Keep your eyes open. No one can hit their target with their eyes closed." ~Paulo Coelho
Throughout the many stages of an initiative, such as new product development, strong representation of the voice of the customer (VoC) can create a much-needed reality check. Insights that are relevant, action-oriented, and well-presented can help a team fine-tune its focus and ensure that product marketing and product development are aligned behind an accurate picture of the customer. Here are some of the ways VoC insights can help you and your team’s focus:
Builds empathy for consumers. The more you understand your customers’ challenges, the better you’re able to walk in their shoes, and feel their frustration and sense of urgency for a solution. This is also important context for positioning and messaging for your product.
Enables you to prioritize what’s important to customers. Your project’s priorities should align with your customers’ priorities. Understanding those priorities allows your team to focus effort and resources to ensure the highest priorities are addressed and features or elements that are much farther down the list are tabled or moved to a “next phase” bucket.
Increases confidence in your decisions. Strategic insights provide tangible supporting evidence that helps your team unite in the confidence of their decision-making. The best insights enable you to know what you (maybe previously) only thought you knew, and don’t require additional data to move forward.
Gets everyone aligned on the mission. Good things happen when a mission is aligned with VoC and is supported by insights. Teams perform at an optimal level when objectives are clear and consistent.
Helps differentiate from other efforts. Rich insights help answer the critical question, “How is this different?” from other initiatives and/or previous attempts to better define your product’s key benefits and differentiators.
Above all, a team that leverages validated, VoC insights will be focused and aligned, and best positioned to develop products and messaging that resonates and meets the needs of the customer. Need guidance or have questions about validating your VoC insights? Give us a shout.