What Is Voice of Customer? And Do You Know Yours? [HubHeroes, Video EP93]

That was another thing, by the way, before we dig knee deep into this that Chad said, is that. How about where's Devin been? Yeah, because we miss him too. And I agree, Chad, we missed the rants about text messaging. Shower basins, link, LinkedIn shower base. Yes. Tower City shower basins, I think it was, or something like that. Tower City, I don't remember anyway, but yes, Devin, if you're listening to this, we love you, we miss you, can't.

Wait to have you back.

Hopefully we'll see you at inbound, but yes, can't wait to have you back for sure. Without a doubt.

Well, George, you already kind of let the cat out of the bag for our live audience joining us here on Riverside about what we're going to be talking about today, bud.

Yeah, I mean, you're just excited to be honest. Perfect all the time.

That's right. This is our once in a blue moon lack of perfection. This right here, ladies and gentlemen, is the moment where George deviated. No, but to be honest, my first point in this outline today is, George, this is something you're super passionate about. We're talking about voice of Customer. And I'd love to give you just a little bit of Runway before we get into today's conversation to just live in that joy. Man, you are so excited to talk about this today.

Yeah. So here's the thing, Liz. You know, for me, it's all about the humans. And the funny thing is that sometimes when organizations start to call humans prospects, leads, customers and evangelists, they forget that they're humans. And so when we say voice of customer, what I'm really saying is voice of meaning. You're paying attention to the fact of how people are engaging with your products. You're paying attention to how people are engaging with your brand. You're paying attention. Like you're paying attention attention, meaning you're listening, meaning you're probably asking questions. By the way, if you're an organization that doesn't understand the power of asking questions versus just dishing out advice, like that's maybe a first place to start. And here's the thing. If you hear the words voice of customer or like I like to say, voice of human, and you immediately think, yeah, we do surveys. No, like voice of customer, a VOC system is much more than just we do surveys every now and then. Like, so here's the thing where I really got ramped up, tuned in to this whole conversation and started to pay attention to it because again, it, it did so much align with just the overarching you know, George B. Thomas brand of it's all about the humans is when I did an interview with Nate Brown, which, by the way, this is. This is a. We'll put his LinkedIn link in the description of the show. He's. He's a gentleman you should pay attention to. But we did an entire interview when I was doing the podcast for Marketing Profs, the Marketing Smarts podcast, a B2B business podcast. And, man, the episode was juicy. Like, it was just so good. Like, he had. That's hot. Like, I was waiting for Max to hit that. That's hot. But, yeah, I was waiting for that, brother. Like, it was just so good, and it was so connective. And so listen, if you're going to have a modern organization, if you're going to be modern leaders, if you're going to be paying attention to modern customers, their needs, their expectations, you have to be listening and you have to be asking because you need to be pivoting and transitioning into what it is that they want, expect, and dream of from your organization. That's why I love today's conversation, Liz.

Well, then let's dig right into it, because, Max, I know before getting into this, you also said, hey, I'm hyped about this discussion, which made me happy after last week's All Bound kerfuffle. Verbal kerfuffle. But let's dig in, George.

Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Which, by the way, Max, did you see in Slack, the little present I left for you about All Bound.

You left him a present in Slack?

Yes, there was a comment on a YouTube channel.

Yeah, I saw that.

That said, I like this All Bound thing. I'm just gonna throw that out there. Not why we're here today, not what we're talking about. But I was like, how do you do that, George?

You just throw a little grenade out there. We're not here to talk about this today, Max, but here you go.

I feel heard, feel seen.

Anyway, that's the voice of your customer.

There just to see, hey, Max, someone else likes it or just.

I didn't understand the.

The what you were trying to get across.

It was a little digital rib punch.

Like, all right, I get it.

Oh, yeah. Let's get back to the love. So, George, you've already started talking about why you like it, what got you excited about this topic. But start this journey for us today, right? When I say voice of customer, where does your brain go? Specifically, what is it? Why are we here having this conversation today? What are we talking about?

Yeah, yeah, so again, I kind of alluded to this about how, like, immediately people might think of, like, yeah, we do surveys. I want you to open up the mind, the eye, the dream, the vision, the mission of voice of customer, and realize it's a process. A process that is focusing on capturing, on, analyzing, and then acting. Which, by the way, the part that really frustrates me is when people are like, we listen to them, we just don't do anything with it. Like, come on. So it's capturing, analyzing, and acting on customer feedback to better understand, again, like I said, their needs, their preferences, their dreams, their desires, their experiences, their expectations. And it is all about gathering these insights. And it's not just feedback, like, just surveys. It's literally, are you doing social listening? Do you have any type of, like, behavior analysis going on? Are we looking at emails over time? Like, there's a bunch of different platforms and a bunch of different ways that we can be capturing, analyzing, and acting. These things that we're getting from customers are humans. Because what we're trying to do is we're trying to improve the products, we're trying to improve the services, we're trying to improve the relationship and make it more of an align or alignment between the business and the strategies and the. The customer. Like, when we start to have that mindset, it's like. And again, I don't know what's up with me lately, but it's like this three angle view of action. Now all of a sudden we start to realize that this is actually the engine that drives the 1% better, 10% better, 50% better each week or year. Because this is what gives us the fuel and the measurement to actually take our momentum and put it in the right direction. Not just any direction.

Max, I want to turn to you now because when I was originally structuring this conversation, immediately to my mind, I'm having flashbacks already to the previous episode of All Bound. Right. And you said at the start of this, no, no, no, this is not like last week. This is not like last week where Max was unhappy and we were talking about semantics and all that stuff, and. And instead you said, no, I like this conversation. I'm excited about this conversation. So what is the difference for you? Because I've actually heard people say, voice of customer. We're already doing this. It's applying a label to something that already exists. It's not really data. So, Max, how is this different for you? Why to you, is this something that's worthy of discussion? What excites you about.

Mm.

So when, when, when I think of like, voice of the customer stuff, and I think, like, there's. There's small ways to quote unquot voice of the customer stuff, and I think there's like, bigger ways of doing voice of the customer stuff. I think the one fundamental thing that, like, ties any of those levels in which you would do voice of the customer stuff is that, like, there's a big difference between, like, we do surveys and we listen to feedback. There's a big difference between that and giving your customers a seat at the table, right? Because when we talk about voice of the customer, it's where are you hearing that voice and when are you hearing that voice? And the difference is you're either hearing that voice after decisions have been made or you're taking that voice into account before decisions are made, right? Like, so, for example, without me even, like, I don't have a role here called like, voice of the customer, right? But when it comes to any of the stuff that we do around product development, right. One thing that I unabashedly know that I am really, really, really good at is being able to think like 12 steps ahead and knowing what HubSpot customers complain about inside of HubSpot, right? So, like, I'm really, really good at saying, hey, if we do something this way, we are going to get people to end up eventually complaining about this thing, right? And so even though that's like a really small example of it, right? What we're doing is we're taking what we know the customer is going to voice, right? Or, you know, have distress about or gonna, like, not gonna like or whatever. And we're applying that to a decision we haven't made already, right? And taking that into consideration before we do make the decision versus just let's build it the way we want it, right? And then get feedback on it after and then have to go back to the drawing board. I think it's like a very micro example of it, right? You know, and then you start to see, like, other customers where they have whole, like, roles and teams and programs, like, based on voice of the customer. Like HubSpot does it. Like, there's literally people there who have roles that are all about voice of the customer, right? And like, the whole idea behind that, you see, you know, a good example of that is like, you see the, like the partner advisory boards, the customer advisory boards, like, very, very intentional efforts, you know. And I'm not saying every small business is going to do this, right? Like, keep in mind, I'm. I'm using HubSpot as an example here.

Right.

But, like, they put together very intentional programs to say, like, hey, how do we bring in our customers and get, like, a really good collective understanding of their sentiment and how they're feeling, and then take all that information and use that as we go and make decisions in the future and change programs and stuff like that versus, like, this is what we think is right. Let's go do it and let's go get feedback. Now, get me wrong, that happens a lot.

Right?

But, like, you know, another really good example that HubSpot does when it comes to voice of the customer stuff is like, the ideas for them.

Yeah.

Using. Yeah, you're literally. You're literally letting your customers dictate the direction of the product, which is just like, talk about giving them a voice at the table. You're quite literally giving them a voice at the table that dictates how this product gets developed and gets built.

Chad actually shouted that out in the comment here. HubSpot project management team is always willing to have zoom meetings during beta, during feature design for something upcoming. I love that they're willing to take this time to hear me out.

So I want to dive into that right there. Because here's the thing I have had, which I know Chad has, Max, you probably well on the other side of this, but, like, I've had the opportunity to be the guy that they reach out to, to ask, to have calls with, and I'm always like, yeah, absolutely, I'll. I'll brainstorm and you can show me stuff. And like, without a doubt, every single time I leave one of those calls, I feel valued. I feel at a deeper level, part of the community. I feel like I've made an impact. What's funny is because they are using a voice of customer because they, as you so eloquently said, giving us a seat at the table, I feel like I'm more than just a customer. I feel like I'm a human and I'm part of the team. And now all of a sudden, like, I'm more invested in the journey and the change and the updates in the ecosystem and the methodologies. Because not sitting at somebody just sitting in a dining room all alone eating their lobster and steak din. I've been invited to come and eat the lobster and steak dinner with them. And that's, like, where I'm going with this is voice of customer. We could talk about it. Like, it's a very selfish thing internally for organizations, but I want you to realize, when done right, the Emotional responses that it will invoke in the people who actually are already embracing your products, services, and you as human beings in an organization.

Yeah. And I think the other thing too is like, everyone can do it in their own way. Like, I think the basic framework is, you know, voice of the customer means being proactive with feedback before decisions are made, whereas most folks are reactive to feedback after decisions are made.

Right.

And I think it's like, you don't have to go put together like the small business listening to this guys. You don't need to go put together a customer advisory council for your bean company. Yeah, Right.

But there's coffee beans. Coffee beans are like chili.

You know what I mean?

Yeah.

Like you don't have to do. But what you can do is, is before you make some big decisions, you can go talk to your customers and see how they feel about them.

Right.

Like that, like sometimes it is just a switch. Like that versus like, we did it. Can we have your feedback? It's more. So we're going to do it. We'd like to hear your thoughts on this first.

Right.

Like there's small, very attainable, approachable, accessible ways of doing that. You don't need customer advisory board.

Right.

Like, again, it's. Sometimes it's just asking questions before decisions are made versus after.

It's so interesting where my brain goes, max, when you say that, because. And I would say right now, just like in this moment, I'm like, oh, shoot. Like that's the culture that I would want to build is a build it with them versus a build it for them mentality. Like having them come along every step of the way. Which again, I'm so glad you brought up ideas.HubSpot.com because that is such a proactive way to have voice of customer and such a good way to build with instead of build for. Because sometimes we'll get in our ivory tower and we'll start to build four and we, we actually build a big pile of like, it's just a big turd. And then all of a sudden there's a bunch of people in your organization trying to polish a turd. And guess what? It's still a turd. But if we would have stopped and we would have listened and we would have asked questions and we would have had a built with mentality instead of a four, we would have been in a way different place.

Yeah.

And this, this reminds me a lot about the conversation that we had around, like the delight stage of the inbound methodology where.

Yeah.

You know, a Lot of people might hear about it and go, oh, that sounds very Kumbaya. And yeah, the customer is always right and be nice to your customers. Well, but it's like, no, there is a very important kind of business strategy behind legitimately taking care of people versus creating a bunch of detractors.

Right.

You can apply that same logic to this.

Right.

Wouldn't you rather get feedback before you do something and do it the right way versus wasting time doing it wrong and then getting feedback about how you have to change it?

Right?

Yes, because it's like what Chad says here. Sometimes you end up building and optimizing a thing that simply shouldn't exist because you didn't ask your audience or customer if it would be helpful. That's my favorite question, right? George, you hear me say this all the time. Are we solving a real problem or are we solving an imagined one? Have you considered asking the customer to find out?

Yeah, who's asking for this? That's a, that's a big thing, right? Yeah, yeah.

So good.

I love that. So let's. We've already started talking about some real world examples of Voc in the wild and how it works. Well, but what are some other examples, George, or Max, that you can think of that really articulate the value of the type of work that we're talking about here?

Yeah. Do you mean from like organizational standpoint or do you mean like, like channels and usage? Like what when you ask that question? Because I was kind of torn, like immediately I started to think of things like, okay, Apple's, which Max, historically working in Apple, like Apple's customer experience, you know, driven by like voice of customer data or like Starbucks and how they tailor their products based on customer feedback on those products. Like, so I went to like brands and things that I fundamentally know that they do. But then there was this other side tangent of like channels and usage to this question. So Liz, which direction either.

What do you think is the most valuable? What is the one you think when you think of our audience? Right, Because I think your follow up question brings up a very valid point. We love the idea of voice of customer work, but when, when you're a small or medium sized business who is looking at inbound methodologies, the way you grow your business through marketing and sales, what is the most valuable? Because I think, and this is true, I think of any principle or any strategic objective that we talk about, right? There is a very different practical application set of, of tactics that you engage in. If you're a Starbucks versus a small or Medium sized business in Ohio. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, that's, that's an apples and bananas type of thing.

Yeah, interesting that you brought up Ohio. But anyway, they could have been in Montana or Texas as well. I'll just throw that out there. Any state. They could be in what, King Arthur's Court? Yes, they could have been in King Arthur's Court as well on Merlin Drive. Anyway, totally. People are like, what the are you talking about? So here's the thing. Stay tuned. We'll tell you more at a later date. But, but here's the thing. I think that it's always good to have a North Star or, or something that you can look at. So like it might be the Apple, it might be the Starbucks, it might be something else that you find as far as a real world case study or usage. But where I go with this conversation because, and I think it's why I made the kind of joke about like we do surveys sometimes is that I think channels is a very important piece of this when I think about real world examples. Because yes, you should be doing surveys. It's honestly like table stakes. And yes, you can use HubSpot Service Hub to do said surveys, but I would say surveys and polls. Like, so are you, do you have a community that you can poll them? Are you doing LinkedIn polls? Are you doing like, like wherever you can kind of get the that type of data? Are you doing that? I also go to social listening as part of this. And by the way, have you checked out HubSpot social listening tools lately? Because while it used to just be Twitter, it's no longer just Twitter. Like you can literally do Instagram listening and LinkedIn and if I remember correctly, maybe Facebook is. Anyway, there's more channels that you can do social listening with HubSpot and you can get very targeted to the things that you want to listen to. And what I love is you can base it off of a list which could be your customer or your human list. Right? So like that one was, I got a little aggressive with that one. I, I, that was angry as I was saying it. I was like, that's a little aggressive. I might have scared myself.

Don't voc angry kids.

Yeah, but I'm telling you. But, but here's the thing.

Like, so lob zombie voice of customer advocate.

Right, Right.

What Chat just typed.

Chat just typed. That wasn't the voice of the customer.

That was the voice of indigestion.

That was like Friday at almost end of day voice.

That was the mucinex guy.

We're thriving, guys.

That was the Mucinex guy doing Mongolian throat singing.

Oh, that's funny. So social listening. But I also think about like support interactions. Like you have hopefully in your organization somebody that is on the other end of the sales process supporting your products, your services, your teams. And so like, are you capturing that information? So my brain immediately goes to like, are you looking at historical tickets and like information that's being dumped into them when it's closed? Are you looking at notes that might be in tickets? Heck, are you using HubSpot's calling feature and being able to go back and listen or watch depending on how you're supporting humans, that information and be able to like, like or gong. I don't. I'm not like, heck, we're a HubSpot kind of focused show. But like, my point is, are you paying attention to historical tickets, historical calls where the voice of customers are already happening and then like, you got to get to the sweet stuff most of the time. Like, are you taking into account online reviews and like testimonials? Because now you have a place and especially if we add in like an ideas HubSpot Ideas, your business. Com. Now you've got a proactive way that you're getting things from people who are using your stuff. You're doing surveys and polls along the way. You're listening to what your customers are saying on social. You're looking at historical data in tickets and calls. And now you're also getting the flood of hopefully reviews, good, bad, ugly maybe, which by the way, address the ugly reviews too. Because at least then you're like seeing them and being human while it's happening in front of the entire world that happens to see those but then leverage the positive ones for your website and different places like that. But so that's where I think of like real world examples is like all the places that you could be playing. But here's the thing. How do you take that and zone it into one area that you can pay attention to that then becomes the main bank of voice of customer information and data that can be analyzed. Because this part I'm talking about capture. Here's all the capture places. How can it be analyzed? And then the most important piece of. And how do you build. And here's the actions we're going to take based on what now heard. Yep.

Do something with it.

Is the whole point.

Like it's not voice of the customer if the voice isn't actually being acted upon.

Right.

It's like when you clean Your room, but all your issues in your closet and then your mom opens your closet door and all the stuff falls out.

I mean, what an attack. We don't need to say that to Liz out loud right now.

I mean, hurtful.

If it's, if it's. That's your life. I mean, hey. Yeah, anyway, I'm not trying to get in a fight on this episode. I've done that in past episodes. It never works out well, get into a fight.

Says the guy who said, hey, Max, did you see that thing in Slack where I intentionally tried to poke the.

Bear earlier this episode? Did I do that in this episode?

You know, it's fine, it's fine.

I should chill out a little.

Yeah, no, I think, George, there's all these different ways that you can collect it, but the question is, are you actually doing anything with it and are you using it to influence decisions that you're making?

Right?

Because a lot of the time people aren't doing that.

Right.

The other thing, too, I think we have this HubSpot blog post that we're linking people to, and one of the examples that they give is a way to collect feedback is obviously Net Promoter Score, right? And I think, like, you know, it's, it's one thing, like people oftentimes, you know, when people see like, oh, they gave us a, you know, a 10 or a 9 or whatever, they were like a promoter, right? What's the first thing we do with that? We go, let's, let's see if they'll actually refer us to somebody. And like, that's what they use that data for, right? They'll go, oh, great. This person said they're highly recommended, like to recommend us to somebody. Let's go send them a refer a friend email or something or tell them to go leave a review or something like that, right? We're just kind of like redirecting this potential juicy, good feedback that they can give us into. Like, hey, can you help help us sell to somebody else? Or can you go like, tell the world that message instead of just leaving it in our Net Promoter Score inbox?

Right?

The thing that I think we're missing there, right, is that if you just said, hey, saw you gave a great review, I'd actually love to understand that even more. Would you like to just have a 30 minute chat with me?

Right?

Because here's the thing. If, if someone was to get themselves into a mindset of like, oh, yeah, I'd stake my reputation on recommending this product service business, whatever, to other people, right? Chances are they have some really good reasons why they feel that way, which would be good for you to know. One, right. And two, even though they really, really like you, they probably have some good ideas on what would make it even better, what would continue or what would. What would make me continue being a promoter and what would take me from a promoter to a detractor.

Right.

It probably has some pretty strong opinions on that stuff.

Right?

So like, one thing I would recommend is like an easy, low hanging fruit example of something you can do if you're a company that's collecting net promoter score information on your customers. Maybe do a little bit more than just saying, hey, can you introduce me to a friend?

Right.

How about you introduce me to some ideas that you have in your head, right? So we can figure out what could we do to be even better? What can we do to keep you a promoter and what should we not do to one day turn you into a detractor?

Right.

So you can use all that information to guide the decisions that for, you know, no uncertain terms makes your customers promoters or detractors or passive.

Right.

So I think it's just like another way of just kind of looking at this feedback you're already getting and it all comes down to just how you're using it a little bit differently, right? Or how you can use it a little bit differently to like really make it true voice of the customer instead of, oh, this is some feedback we got. Yep, we're doing a good job.

Right?

But it's. There's so much more past. Yeah, we're doing a good job. It's like, you know, why are we doing a good job? How can we do even better? What's going to keep us doing a good job?

Right?

That kind of stuff. And I think there's probably deeper conversations sitting behind those 9 and 10 net promoter scores other than this is my friend Jeff and he might also like to buy what you have.

Right?

So.

Or can we get a testimonial thing?

Yeah, testimonial. Yeah, I love it.

So let's flip the script here a little bit. I want to talk a little bit.

Flip the script.

That's right there. You got your rapping, then you did it.

No, no, no, no.

You did it.

There'll be God.

Oh, no. Okay, fantastic. That's not at all terrifying or, and.

It may or may not be in the voice and tone of I'm fine.

And not dry heaving. I'm fine and not dry heaving. Okay, so I want to flip, flip, flip the script here. A little bit and talk about where voice of customer work goes wrong. And I want to start this part by saying where my immediate, my. Where my brain immediately goes based on what I'm hearing is first of all, where does the voice of customer work go wrong? By avoiding it, by not doing it. That sounds like a big way that this kind of goes wrong right off the bat. What do you think, George?

Obviously what you said, like, here's the thing. It's almost like I want to lean into how earlier we said building a product that shouldn't exist based on not like paying attention. Don't just gather feedback, don't just take polls, don't just do social listening to do it, like have clear goals. Like what. What are the goals of your voice of customer program? Right. The other thing is think people will say, well, we've only got a hundred customers or we've only, like, for us, I could say we only have 15 customers per se. Like, let's just throw that out there as a number. Why should I do VOC? Like, it makes sense for a big SaaS company that has like 600,000 customers. No, no, no, no, no. Because here's the thing. What they're trying to do or what their brain might be going after is like, voice of customer equals quantity. That's a falsality. Voice of customer equals quality. If I get 15 quality insights from 15 conversations, I don't need to have 500 more. Now would I have 500 more?

Sure.

If it was formulated in a way that the outcome was quality insights versus a bunch of quantity junk. So, right. It's clear goals and then it's this idea of quality versus quantity of what you're trying to get. And then we already, we already alluded to this one, but like, done the. I don't want to swear on this podcast. It's not. I don't want to get us cancelled. I don't want to be that guy. That's. Yeah. I have other people on this podcast for that. But like, you are welcome. Yes, yes. Noah thanks you for job security. It's like, like act on the data, act on the conversations. Like the pivots and transitions on the insights that your brain now has that you didn't previously have. Those are three. I. I don't know, you guys might have more, but that. Those are three that immediately come to my mind.

Yeah. So we were seeing what goes wrong. Well, I mean, yeah, like one thinking that I have to be a certain type of business or I have to be a certain size business. To do any sort of voice of the customer work is insane. Like, if you have customers, guess what you can do voice of the customer and stuff. Like, it's all you need is do you have customers?

They have voices.

They have voices. Like they talk, right? And they say words and you can hear them and make decisions based on those words, right? Like, and we don't even have to, I think like when we start calling it voice to the customer program, I think that scares a lot of people away because there might be some folks are saying, like, hey, I can barely pay my sales people, I don't have room for another program. And think of it as like voice the customer efforts, right? There are things you can do that make the voice of the customer heard and get woven into your decision making process, right? But I think in terms of like, what can go wrong, right? You know, if we do, if you are developing any kind of product and when I say develop, I'm not meaning like typing, coding, like I'm just saying building any sort of product, thinking of the next iteration or how you can make a product better, you know, scope, creep or whatever the, you know, whatever the same term would be for anything that's not like, you know, building software. Trying to do everything for everyone, right. Can be really tough because if you try to make a product that does everything for everybody, then all of a sudden it does nothing for nobody, right? So being able to like, not only make sure you're hearing those voices, but being able to weigh those voices and being able to be comfortable choosing what you are and are not going to do based on those voices, right? Because you might have a really, really loud customer that really, really wants something. But like, if that's not something the majority of the customer voices you're hearing, it might be something you need to omit, right? And you have to make tough decisions around that, right? Sunset. Yeah, sunset. Rip Timer, man. So rip to the goat. So I think, yeah, like, it is one of those things like, you know, whenever we're building something and we're talking about like a new feature or something else, the products can do. The best sort of like voice of the customer gut check that I get is like when I hear from Connor or Ryan say, he'll say, has anybody actually asked for this?

Right?

And sometimes it'll be like, yeah, people ask for it all the time, right? Or it'll be like, I know people are going to ask for this because I know what causes people to get really annoyed in HubSpot. And then sometimes it's no, nobody's asking for this, but I know it would be really cool. And it's just something that I don't think they know to ask for yet.

Right.

And you know, you start to get into these like weird places where it's, you know, you got to make a lot of decisions around a lot of the data and you got to gut check your own sort of beliefs on what you think your product needs, you think your service needs this, that and the other thing. And it's always really important to kind of like center yourself back down to like, has anybody actually asked for this?

Right.

And using that in the decision making process.

I see that a lot on the sales enablement content side where like whenever I'm doing like a brainstorm with them, it'll be like, are they actually asking this question or is this what you want them to be asking? But George, what were you going to say?

So it's, it's interesting because yes to everything that we're talking about. But, but what hit my brain like a two by four on a like cold winter's day was the amount of humans who are almost not willing to follow their gut and have the Henry Ford and Steve Jobs moments. Because there is the importance of voice of customer and listening to the customer. But sometimes they wanted a faster horse, sometimes they wanted another mp3 player or cassette player. And so sometimes when, and I'm talking specific to products here, maybe even services, but sometimes you have to step out and take a chance to transition to something that might be what they're looking for before they're looking for it now. Here's what I think the problem is that many people will think, well, we can't do that because we might fail. Ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, here's the thing. It's not about failing, it's about learning the lesson. And by the way, the reason I'm bringing that up is because that's one way you can learn lessons. But voice of customer, it's lessons. It is literally free. Well, depending on if you pay a team and all that, because I don't want to get hate mail. But it is, it is lessons delivered to you from the. But also if you lean into what I am talking about here with the Henry Ford, the Steve Jobs, it's just lessons of life, of doing business. And we can't be afraid of that. We have to embrace both lines of learning. Anyway, like I said in the chat.

RIP, Microsoft, Zune, because we needed another MP3 player from my millennial kids.

Anybody remember the mini disc Player. I bought one of those. Good Lord. Why did I do that?

But we did a lot of things back then. Yeah, we did a lot of things.

I sure did.

Moment of silence. Except not really.

Yeah.

No. I love what you brought up there, George, because I think it's really important how to understand how we limit ourselves, because the other way in which I could see this going wrong is the reasons why we don't engage this kind of work. Right. Like, on the top level, in the superficial way, we might say things like, oh, we don't have time for another program. We don't have time for this. We don't have time for that. Are those excuses because you're not ready to hear from the voice of the customer? You're not ready to hear what they have to say? I think it requires posture. It would.

It sounds scarier when we call it a program when it should just be. You can do these tiny little efforts. It's just a. Well, that's less than the way you use feedback, though, right?

Well, that's less of. What I mean, Max. What I mean more is like, we will hide behind excuses like, oh, it's too difficult. It's too challenging. When the real spooky, scary reason is, well, I don't want to open the door to feedback from customers because what if they hate us? Or, like, there are some organizational leaders who are just straight up resistant to change. Like, it's. It's the. It's the negative extreme of the Henry Ford and Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs effect. Our customers just do not know what's best for them at all.

Yeah.

And so there's. There's an openness to feedback you have to have.

Yeah, true.

It's. And I don't know why my brain works this way. I really don't. But it's almost like there's two things that are popping my brain. One, you have to have alligator skin. Because you just have to realize, like, it's. You're gonna hear things you don't want to hear, but it's out of that pain that you're gonna be able to create something that is absolutely amazing. And, you know, not that alligators are the most flexible things on the planet, but that's the other thing that came to my brain, was the flexibility and the actual, like, digital transformation business gymnastics that this voice of customer will enable you, if you have the thick alligator skin, to push through fear of what we're talking about and put together the mini processes that feed this to you.

And I think also, too, when it Comes down to business.

Right.

I think survival of the fittest and natural selection kind of comes into play. I think the companies that have evolved the ability to listen.

Yes.

Sin. Listen to your customers.

Right.

Are the ones that are going to have a higher chance of survival than the ones that don't. Because the ones that don't keep going towards the cliff. The ones that do turn away from the cliff because they heard that little voice of the customer saying, hey, turn left. Turn left away from the cliff.

Right.

And it shows.

To listen to that voice versus the ones that were just like, we're just going to do things the way that we want. We're not going to listen to our customer. Oh, we fell off the cliff and we're dead and we're gone.

Right.

You know, I mean, not that it's.

Funny that they're dead, but that was fun. Scary.

To listen to your customers sometimes because you might get your feelings hurt. Well, hey, your feelings are going to be much more hurt when no one's buying anything from you and you're laying everybody off.

Right.

So it's like, what's worse?

Yeah, bro. Unemployment or being out of business is much more painful than listening to your customers.

Yeah.

I'd much rather read an NPS survey. It's about a company and not me, Myself, a human being.

Yeah.

Right.

Lose my job or, like, fail at hitting our metrics or, like, whatever.

Right.

Yeah.

So, George, I know this is a conversation that we could literally run another couple hours on. And there's an ex. There are numerous resources that I know you definitely want to share with our audience if they want to start digging deeper into this idea of voice of customer. Can you share those with us?

Yeah. So, first of all, there is Nate Brown. I mentioned his name earlier. You can search it. You can literally look for the podcast episode. We did also did like, I think a Facebook Live going over that podcast. If you want the short version, there's also. And dang it, if I don't have my show notes up. But there's CX Community, which will.

Accelerator.

Yep, CX Accelerator, which we'll put in the show notes because that's a place that you can tune into and kind of get more information. And then there's a quite large. I'll call it a pillar page. It's a blog, but dang gone. Like, I was there for a hot minute. HubSpot put it on and. Or created it. And it has a bunch of tools that you can dive into. It has a bunch of questions that you could be Asking. They're really smart because they have a CTA where you can download 61 templates to do some of the things that you're trying to do when it comes down to this voice of customer. So, like, HubSpot's 12, which, by the way, sounds like it's not a big number, but it's a big number. And the article is big, but it's 12 voice of customer methodologies to generate a gold mine of customer feedback. And so it goes deep into the channels, goes deep into the templates, goes deep into the, like, different softwares or stuff that you could use. So that's a good resource. And I think those three places, other than just Googling Voice of Customer and doing your own little journey on what that means to you and your organization, are some of the places I would send you first. Again, Nate Brown, like, the dude is, by the way, he's the inspiration for this episode and for a future episode. Because I can't wait, Liz, till we get to the conversation that we're going to have in the future of Voice of Employee. Very excited about that one pair with this voice of customer conversation we're having today.

Outstanding. Well, George, land the plane. Take us home. What do you want our people to take away from this conversation today? Because we covered a lot of ground.

Yeah.

Start listening, start asking questions, and start taking action. Like, if. If I were to wrap up this thing, like, so many times, we get stuck in the weeds of the day in, day out, doing. I clock in, I get my coffee, I check my email, I design this thing, I build this thing, I watch this YouTube video while I'm eating lunch. Then I check my email, and we just easily forget that there are hundreds, if not thousands, if not millions of humans wanting to feel like they belong, wanting to feel like they're being heard, wanting to feel like they're being seen, and we're just letting it all slip through the cracks. And literally, you are one voice of customer piece of information, the next great idea that may explode your brand or business to a place that you never thought it could achieve. Max, it looks like you have something to say.

Yeah, I didn't know if you. I was waiting because I didn't know if you were gonna, like, end it on that.

No, no.

Yeah.

I have something special, which, by the way, you didn't like Eminem when I said that, so I might have a different special thing for you. But next. What are you. What are your thoughts? What are you thinking?

Yeah, I mean, I think the thing much like many of the topics that are more esoteric that we talk about on this show, I think the big thing would be, is, like, don't overthink it.

Right?

Everyone can do this. All you have to do is think a little bit differently about where you're applying the fee. When. Sorry, when you're applying the feedback that you're getting.

Right.

Are you being proactive with it? And just start to ask yourself. There could be millions of ways to do it, but just start asking. Ask yourself, what's the simplest way that we could give our customers a voice at the table when we're making big decisions that impact them? And how can we take that into account before we make the decision? Every business can do that in some way, shape, or form.

Right?

It doesn't have to be it again, it doesn't have to be a program. It doesn't have to be a advisory board. It doesn't have to be something that is completely unique to specific industries. Everybody has people that give them money for something. So you have customers. Those customers, for the most part, can communicate with you somehow. How do you take that voice and apply it to decisions you're making that have an impact on them before the decision is made? Okay. You go figure it out.

All right.

It's not rocket science. That's what I'm gonna say.

Love it. So now let's play a game. Max, get your hand close to the buzzer. Liz, get your hand close to the buzzer. Because I regenerated this into another voice, and I'm gonna read the first line. If the person that tells me what voice I regenerated this in before I do the rest of the rap song on V. I will buy them a breakfast burrito at Dunkin Donuts at. No.

Yes. No.

This is my Buster noise, by the way.

Breakfast burrito at Dunkin Donuts at Inbound. Okay, so this is a rapper's voice. This is a. This is a rap. This is a rap song that I'm going to rap slash, read through. But I'm going to give you the first line. You're going to hit the buzzer, and you're going to tell me who the rapper is. Because it's not Eminem. Because Liz had a visceral response to.

Like, actually really like Eminem. I was just more like, oh, God, is he gonna pretend to be Eminem? It was more of a like, I can't.

Yo, I'm not the goat. I can't rap like him. So no way. So ready? Here it goes. Now, this is a story all about how that's Prince Max. How did you get like you? You got torched, bro. All right, so here it is.

You were gonna play audio.

No, no, no. It's not that we don't suck it.

I get the breakfast burrito of destiny. You are a loser.

We don't have that kind of budget. But so. So here we go. Now this is a story all about how your feedback's the crown that we rock right now. From 5 star reviews to what's on your mind. We ain't just chilling, we're pressing rewind. We flip the script when things go wrong. Customer service, smooth like a 90s song. No assumptions here. Now we dig and explore. Peeping every detail. Then you give you. And then we give you more. Now that's the first. But I gotta. I gotta do the chorus and I gotta share the bridge because they're hilarious, by the way. There's other verses. I'm not going to do them all. But the chorus goes. So tell me how you feel. Don't hold it in. We're here to vibe with you. Let the convo begin. We ask the right questions, no guessing the deal. Then take action, take action. Keeping it real. All right, so I had to get the take action piece, and now the bridge is. It's a back and forth. It's. It's a back and forth like a ping pong game. You speak, we groove, keep shaking the frame. No canned response. We straight up flow innovation together. Let the energy grow.