Virtual Voice of the Customer – How to Understand B2B Customer Needs Without the Plane Ride

By Don Adams

With virtual voc, geography no longer matters. This is important for qualita­tive discovery interviews, because you should interview multiple customer contacts simultaneously. This lets customer contacts build off each other’s ideas. Just like brainstorming. For quantitative preference interviews, it’s even more important to engage all decision-influencers at the same time. Why? Imagine the operations manager rates the importance of abrasion resistance at “3” and the market manager gives it a “9.” If you gathered results individually, you’d have to average their responses at “6” … a terrible idea.

But in a virtual session with all present, you can let them debate. You eventually resolve department-specific viewpoints with a simple question: “From the perspec­tive of your entire company, how important is abrasion resistance?” The key to great voc is great probing. One such approach is the “What and Why” method of probing. The moderator asks “What” questions, such as “When does this happen?” and “Can you describe this?”
As you can see, the ques­tions don’t all begin with the word, “What.” You’re simply trying to understand what the customer is telling you. Think of these as questions of observation.

Then moderator asks “Why” ques­tions, like “How does this impact you?” or “Why is this a problem for you?” These are questions of implication. Such questions are especially valuable when you’re trying to understand how much value your new product delivers and how you should price it. It’s important to avoid closed-end questions, which can be answered with a simple “yes” or “no.” This is one of the advantages of the “What and Why” method. These questions are always open-ended by their nature, and lead to more thoughtful responses, longer replies, and greater insight.