The Fallacy of Voice of the Customer

Revenue and profit growth is one of the top agendas for most corporations. Growth is primarily achieved through either mergers and acquisitions or organic means. Innovation is the key approach to drive organic growth, however, the process of innovation and organic growth has been considered messy, risky, and unpredictable. We know that organic growth is achieved by creating new value proposition for customers with unmet needs. Within the last few years, companies have placed greater emphasis in collecting voice of the customer (VOC) to accelerate their innovation efforts. In spite of all the advances made in voice of the customer research, companies still bring products and services to the market place that fail.

While customers have a key place in formulating our innovation strategy, many voice of the customer  gathering processes are flawed or misdirected. Most companies and customers are good at articulating what they are familiar with, which leads then to focus on the functions of the existing products and solutions. As such, the literal voice of the customers is usually centered on the useful and harmful functions of existing solutions. For example, let us say that our company manufactures lawn mowers. We decide to conduct a focus group of our lawn mower customers to gather the voice of the customers. These customers are likely to tell the lawn mower manufacturer that they need to make the lawn mower more fuel efficient, easier to push, less noisy, less polluting the environment, easier to maintain, easier to store, occupy less space, cut grass faster and uniform, and weigh less. Sophisticated customers might indicate that they would like to see lawn mowers in different colors and styles that appeal to human emotions. On the surface, these would appear as true customer need based on the voice of the customer (VOC).

On the other hand, if we ask the lawn mower customers why they are using lawn mowers, they are likely to answer that it is for cutting grass. If we ask them again, why they need to cut grass they are likely to say that it is for keeping the grass beautiful. The reason for keeping the grass beautiful could be to have aesthetically pleasing surroundings, conform to Homeowner’s Association regulations, or to increase the value of your home. While most lawn mower companies such as Honda and John Deer are focused on improving the lawn mower, another company is working on eliminating the need to cut grass. They are trying to bring about a new generation of S-curve to satisfy the need of keeping the grass beautiful without the need for mowing it regularly. It is interesting to note that most incumbent businesses are not good at commercializing the next generation of S-curve. It is none of candle companies that commercialized the light bulbs, and none of the slide rule companies that commercialized the calculator. The failure is not because the incumbents are not collecting the voice of the customers, but not focusing on the underlying customer need. Professor Ted Leavitt of Harvard Business School once said, “People who buy power drills don’t necessarily want to buy a quarter inch drill. They want a quarter inch hole”. The underlying customer need is called a Job to Be Done. A Job to Be Done is the reason customers are hiring or using our products and solutions. Companies good at innovating, always focus on this higher purpose for which their customers buy products, services and solutions.