Streamlining the Voice of the Customer : A study exploring Voice of the Customer at Company X

Abstract: One of the components of customer focus in a company is voice of the customer (VOC). Companies use the VOC for guiding them in producing products and services that help meet customer needs.  There exists numerous VOC methods from literature for collecting VOC data, and it often recommends using multiple VOC methods to obtain better insight into consumer use, needs and problems.   In addition, the literature recommends companies to have a unified data collection process to effectively collect, integrate and understand the VOC. In this explorative case study, the authors investigate the VOC methods used by Company X and how VOC data collected from various methods are aggregated and employed at Company X.  Company X is a large bus manufacturing company with a global presence and annual revenue of 3.1 billion USD. The study intends to understand if the academic recommendations reflect VOC practices at Company X. The results from the study find that the criterion for choosing VOC methods at Company X is determined by the complexity of methods.  Elaborate methods, such as focus groups and ethnography that help in complementing more commonly used methods, such as interviews and questionnaires, to capture necessary customer information, are not preferred due to being time and resource intensive.   Furthermore the need for a structured process to aggregate VOC data from different sources is felt across the organization at Company X.  However, the high cost of implementing a VOC process, resource constraints and un-evident benefits of a structured VOC process are found to be the main reasons that work against implementation of a structured process.