Top Leaders Seeking Customer Feedback: Survey Shows That 90% Of Companies Don’t Do This

Let’s say your company wants to introduce a new product or service. New survey data shows that 52% of development teams report that their roadmap for new introductions begins with feedback. In other words, the conversation begins with listening - gathering ideas that can be useful in creating features, functions and familiarity for customers. But here’s the twist: 90% of companies fail to successfully capture feedback from all available sources - and a third (33%) of product development teams have no process whatsoever for capturing customer feedback. The most important part of the conversation is listening, when it comes to creating new solutions. So why are companies struggling to gather vital feedback? And what can leaders do, right now, to tune in to the voice that matters most: the voice of the customer?

Hubert Palan is the CEO of Productboard, a company that specializes in product development, acceleration and process management software. “When you look at the top digital companies, the Zendesks and the Slacks of the world, they don’t just do user research and write long specs when there’s a product launch ahead. The way they are organized is different, because they don't keep the product team and the designers and engineers inside of siloes.” Collaboration is the key: between salespeople, marketing, product development and customer success. Palan goes on, “It's like an extended and constant census, for the product organization. Almost like the Star Trek fleet,” the company founder says with a laugh, “where the mission is always exploring.” Above all, the lines of communication are open.

How can you know if your organization is truly customer-driven? Salesforce executive, Karen Mangia, is asking. She’s the author of Listen UP! How to Tune In to Customers and Turn Down the Noise (released this week from Wiley). “According to a recent CEO survey from PWC,” she explains, from her home office in Indianapolis, “CEOs rated data about customer preferences and needs as 94% critical. And only 15 percent adequate.” She says that there are three things that get in the way of accessing the kind of product development (and customer experience) data that matters.

1. Beginner’s Mindset: Karen says that the most valuable experience comes when you have the discipline to forget what you thought you knew. “You have to treat each customer interaction as if it were the first,” she says, acknowledging the importance of discovery. Palan agrees. “Product companies like P&G have gotten it right for years: constantly adjusting, monitoring, gathering feedback.” Is it more important to satisfy existing customers? Or attract new ones? “Yes,” Karen says simply, with a smile. “But those two things - attraction and retention - get better when you drop preconceptions about what you think people need and want. Because you really start to figure out what’s beyond your own thinking when you tune in to theirs.”
2. Too Many Tools: In Listen Up!, Mangia cites research from Logicalis that shows that 41% of respondents have implemented Artificial Intelligence in some way. “But 47% report that their organization is not very successful when it comes to AI.” Palan chimes in, “The digital experience is critical. Covid-19 has made that the competitive frontier.” Mangia says that the challenge comes when we think that digital transformation is the solution. “Actually, it’s only a tool,” Mangia shares. “And what makes a tool useful is the way that you use it.” Is your company betting too much on tech, over-buying or over-engineering features that no one wants to use? “There’s one way to find out,” Mangia says, referencing a quote from Ulrike Nehammer, the former CEO of Coca-Cola Germany: “You need to make decisions where the customer is.” Capturing accurate feedback - and distributing that information across the organization - prevents isolated decision-making. Too many tools can complicate things.
3. Break Through Bias: “Bias can create blind spots,” Mangia points out. Consider a product manager at a high-flying technology company like Slack, versus someone in a similar role at a bank. What are the cultural boundaries that make those positions vastly different? While Palan doesn’t suggest that banks need to become tech companies, he hints that customers might. After all, when was the last time you stepped inside a bank? The digital experience is the new marketplace. “What customer problem is your digital solution trying to solve?”, Mangia asks. “The operative word in that sentence isn’t ‘digital’, it’s ‘customer.’” What is your organization doing to identify and address the kind of bias that’s keeping you from seeing blind spots? Is your culture keeping you from focusing on what matters, because of what you already think you know? The digital world has changed, shifted and accelerated. Traditional brick and mortar businesses have to adapt, and break through the limiting cultural bias of a pre-pandemic world.

With millions of people employed in customer roles, either through sales, service, customer success, product development or even company leadership, the career impact of listening is clear. The companies that embrace the future of work will do so with a digital focus that listens in new ways. That doesn’t just mean more surveys, as Mangia is quick to point out. “Customers are always communicating, and doing so in various ways. Sometimes with a closed wallet, cancelled contract or an abandoned cart,” she points out. Closed wallet or closed sale, Mangia says there’s more to discover. “What companies need to look for, and listen for, is the reason why.”