Do you live in a world filled with corporate data? Are you plagued by siloed departments? Are your lackluster growth strategies demolishing your chances for success? Are you held captive by the evil menace Lord Lack? Lack of time, lack of strategy, and lack of the most important and powerful tool in your superhero tool belt, knowledge.
Intro:Never fear, hub heroes. Get ready to don your cape and mask, move into action, and become the hub hero your organization needs. Tune in each week to join the league of extraordinary inbound heroes as we help you educate, empower, and execute. Hub Heroes, it's time to unite and activate your powers. Before we begin, we need to disclose that Devin is currently employed by HubSpot at the time of this episode's recording.
Intro:This podcast is in no way affiliated with or produced by HubSpot, and the thoughts and opinions expressed by Devin during the show are that of his own and in no way represent those of his employer.
George B. Thomas:That was another thing, by the way, before we dig, knee deep into this that, Chad said is that how about where's Devon been? Yeah. Because we miss him too. And I agree, Chad. We missed the rants about text messaging.
Liz Moorhead:Shower basins?
George B. Thomas:Linked 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.
Liz Moorhead:Can't wait to have you back.
George B. Thomas:Hopefully, we'll see you at inbound, but, yes, can't wait to have you back for sure without a doubt.
Liz Moorhead:Well, George, you already kinda let the cat out of the bag for our live audience joining us here on Riverside about what we're gonna be talking about today, bud.
George B. Thomas:Yeah. I mean
Liz Moorhead:You're just excited. And You can't
George B. Thomas:be perfect all the time.
Liz Moorhead:That's right. This is our once in a blue moon lack of perfect 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.
Liz Moorhead:We're talking about voice of customer. Yeah. 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.
Max Cohen:Yeah.
Liz Moorhead:We are so excited to talk about this today.
George B. Thomas:Yeah. So, here's the thing, Liz. You know for me, it's all about the humans.
Liz Moorhead:Oh, yeah.
George B. Thomas:And the funny thing is that sometimes when organizations, start to call
Liz Moorhead:humans,
George B. Thomas: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
Liz Moorhead:of humans.
George B. Thomas: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. Meaning, you're listening.
George B. Thomas: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.
George B. Thomas:No. Like, voice of customer, a VOC system is much more than just we 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 a this is a we'll put his LinkedIn, link in the description of the show. He's a 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 b to b business podcast.
George B. Thomas: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.
Max Cohen:Oh, that's hot.
George B. Thomas:Yeah. I was waiting for that, brother. Like, it was just so good, and it was so connective. Modern leaders, if you're gonna 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 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.
Liz Moorhead: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 stick with George.
George B. Thomas:Which wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait.
George B. Thomas:Which, by the way, Max, did you see in Slack, the little present I left for you about Allbound.
Liz Moorhead:You left him a present in Slack?
George B. Thomas:There was a comment on a YouTube channel that
Liz Moorhead:said saw that.
George B. Thomas: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,
Max Cohen:I like
Liz Moorhead:how you do that, George. You just throw a little grenade out there. We're not here to talk about this today, Max. Yeah. But here you go.
George B. Thomas:I feel heard. I feel seen. Anyway
Liz Moorhead:That's the voice of your customer.
Max Cohen:Point 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 with all
George B. Thomas:of the digital rib punch. Like, you're
Max Cohen:not teaching.
Liz Moorhead:Yeah. You see other people like,
Max Cohen:I get it. I get it. Tonight.
Liz Moorhead:Tonight. Oh, yeah. Let's get back to the love
George B. Thomas:fest. Wow.
Max Cohen:Good to know.
Liz Moorhead: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?
Liz Moorhead:What are we talking about?
George B. Thomas: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, a, it's a process.
George B. Thomas:A process is focusing on capturing, one, analyzing, two, 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.
George B. Thomas: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 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 on these things that we're getting from our, customers, our our humans.
George B. Thomas: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 customer. Like, when we start to have that, mindset, it's like and, again, I'm 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 we start to realize that this is actually the engine that drives the 1% better, 10% better, 50% better each week, quarter, year, because this is what gives us the fuel and the the measurement to actually take our momentum and put it in the right direction, not just any direction.
Liz Moorhead:Max, I wanna turn to you now because, you know, I when I was originally structuring this conversation immediately to my mind, I'm I'm having flashbacks already to the previous episode of All Bound. Right? And you said at the start of this, no. No. No.
Liz Moorhead: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 instead, he said, no. I like this conversation. I'm excited about this conversation.
Liz Moorhead: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 the label to something that already exists. It's not really.
Liz Moorhead:So, Max, how is this different for you? Why to you is this something that's worthy of discussion? What excites you about it?
Max Cohen: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, unquote, do voice of the customer stuff, and I think there's, like, bigger ways of doing voice of the customer stuff. I think the one, like, 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, oh, 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?
Max Cohen: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.
Max Cohen: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.
Max Cohen:Right? And take 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.
Max Cohen: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?
Max Cohen:And, like, yep. 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 gonna do this. Right?
Max Cohen: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.
Max Cohen:Don't 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. Like, you're literally using Yeah.
Max Cohen:You're literally use 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.
Liz Moorhead: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. Yes.
George B. Thomas:So I wanna 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.
George B. Thomas: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 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're as you so, eloquently said, giving us a seat at the table, I feel like I'm more than just a customer.
George B. Thomas:I feel like I'm a
Max Cohen:human,
George B. Thomas: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 I'm not sitting at somebody, just sitting in a dining room all alone eating their lobster and steak dinner. 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.
Max Cohen: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 the small business listening to this, guys, you don't need to go put together a customer advisory council for your bean company.
George B. Thomas:Yeah.
Max Cohen:Right? But there is Bean. Copy. Whatever it is.
Liz Moorhead:You know what I mean? Yeah. Like, you don't have to do that. But But but
Max Cohen: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's just a switch like that versus, like, we did it. Can we have your feedback? It's more so, we're gonna do it.
Max Cohen: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 a customer advisory board. Right?
Max Cohen:Like, again, it's sometimes, it's just asking questions before decisions are made versus after.
George B. Thomas:It's so interesting where my brain goes, Max, when you say that because and and I would say right now, just, like, in this moment, I'm like, oh, shoot. Like, that's the culture that I would wanna build is a build it with them versus a build it for them mentality. Like Yeah. 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 for, 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.
George B. Thomas: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.
Max Cohen:Yeah. And this this reminds me a lot of 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, it but it's like, no.
Max Cohen:There is a, 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?
Max Cohen:Right? Yeah. Because, like, what
Liz Moorhead:bad 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 for 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?
Liz Moorhead:Out?
Max Cohen:Yeah. Who's asking for this? That's the that's the big thing. Right?
George B. Thomas:Yeah. Yeah. So good.
Liz Moorhead: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?
George B. Thomas:Yeah. Do you mean from, like, organizational standpoint, or do you mean, like like, channels and usage? Like, what When you asked that question because I was kinda torn. Like, immediately, I started to think of things like, okay. Apple's which Mac's, historically working in Apple.
George B. Thomas:Like, Apple's customer experience, you know, driven by, like, voice of customer data or, like, Starbucks and then how they tailor their products based on customer feedback on those products. Like so I went to, like, brands and 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, like, which direction?
Liz Moorhead: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.
Liz Moorhead:But 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?
Liz Moorhead:Yeah. Yeah. That's that's an apples and bananas type of thing.
George B. Thomas:Yeah. Interesting that you brought up Ohio. But, anyway, they they could have been in Montana or Texas as well. I'll just throw that out there. Any state.
George B. Thomas:They could be in whatever they live in. 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.
George B. Thomas: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.
George B. Thomas:It might be the Starbucks. It might be something else that you find as far as a real world, case study or 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.
George B. Thomas: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?
George B. Thomas:I also go to social listening as part of this. And, by the way, have you checked out HubSpot's 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 wanna listen to.
George B. Thomas:And what I love is you can base it off of a list, which could
Liz Moorhead:be
George B. Thomas:your customer or your Human. List. Right? So, like
Max Cohen:That one was a lot more gurgly than me.
Liz Moorhead:That one. I I That was angry.
George B. Thomas:As I was saying it, I was like, that's a little aggressive. I might have scared myself.
Liz Moorhead:V o
George B. Thomas:c angry, kid. But
Max Cohen:Well, no.
George B. Thomas:No. I'm telling you. But but here's the thing. Like, so Rob Zombie,
Liz Moorhead:voice of customer advocate.
George B. Thomas:Right. Right.
Liz Moorhead:Yo. But Chad just type Chad just type. That wasn't the voice of the customer. That was the voice of indigestion.
George B. Thomas:That was, like, Friday at almost end of day voice.
Max Cohen:That was the Mucinex guy doing
Liz Moorhead:thriving guy.
Max Cohen:Doing mon that was the Mucinex guy doing Mongolian throat singing is what that was.
George B. Thomas:Oh, that's funny. So 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?
George B. Thomas: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 gotta 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 or ideasyourbusiness.com, now you've got a proactive way that you're getting things from people who are using your stuff.
George B. Thomas:You're doing surveys and polls along the way. You're listening to what your customers are seeing 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. 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 your website and different places like that.
George B. Thomas:But so that's where I think of, like, real world examples. It's 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.
George B. Thomas:How can it be analyzed? And then the most important piece of and how do you build, and here's the actions we're gonna take based on what is now heard.
Max Cohen:Yep. Do something with it is the point. Like, it's not voice of the customer if the voice isn't actually being acted upon. Right?
George B. Thomas: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.
Liz Moorhead:That's hurtful. What an attack. We don't need to say that to Liz out loud right now.
George B. Thomas:I mean What? 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.
George B. Thomas:I've done that in past episodes. It never works out well.
Max Cohen:Get into a fight?
Liz Moorhead:Says the guy who said, hey, Max. Did you see that thing in Slack where I intentionally tried to poke the bear
George B. Thomas:with it? This episode? Did I do that this episode?
Liz Moorhead:You know, it's fine. It's fine.
George B. Thomas:I should shoot out a little.
Liz Moorhead:Yeah. No. I think, George, you mean, you're there's all these different ways that you can collect it, but the question is is,
Max Cohen:like, are you actually doing anything with it, and
Liz Moorhead:are you using it to influence decisions that
Max Cohen:you're making? Right? Because a lot of the time, people aren't doing that.
Liz Moorhead:Right? The other thing too, like, you know, I think we have this HubSpot blog post that we're meeting people too. And, you know, one of
Max Cohen: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,
Liz Moorhead:oh, they gave us a, you know, a a a 10 or a nine or whatever, they were like a promoter.
Max Cohen:Right? What's the first thing we do with that? We go, oh, let's let's see if they'll actually refer us to somebody. And, like, that's what they use that data for. Right?
Max Cohen:They'll go, oh, great. This person said they're highly rec like, likely to recommend us to somebody. Let's go send them a refer a friend email or some 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.
Max Cohen:Could 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.
Max Cohen:I'd actually love to understand that even more. Would you like to just have a thirty minute chat with me? Right? Because here's the thing. If if someone was to get themselves into a mindset of, like, oh, yeah.
Max Cohen:I'd stake my reputation on recommending this product service business or 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? They probably have some pretty strong opinions on that stuff.
Max Cohen: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?
Max Cohen: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.
Max Cohen: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?
Max Cohen: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 gonna keep us doing a good job? Right?
Max Cohen:That kind of stuff. And I think there's probably deeper conversations sitting behind those nine and ten net promoter scores other than this is my friend, Jeff, and he might also like to buy what you have. Right? Or can
Liz Moorhead:we get a testimonial thing?
Max Cohen:Yeah. Can we get a testimonial? Yeah. I love it. This.
Liz Moorhead:So let's flip the script here a little bit. I wanna talk a little
George B. Thomas:bit the script. That's right.
Liz Moorhead:There you got your rapping, and
George B. Thomas:you did it. No. No. No. No.
George B. Thomas:You did it. There there'll be more.
Max Cohen:Oh, god. Oh,
Liz Moorhead:no. Okay. Fantastic. That's not at all terrifying.
George B. Thomas:And it may or may not be in the voice and tone of Eminem.
Liz Moorhead:I find 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 and and I wanna 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 voice of customer work go wrong?
Liz Moorhead:By avoiding it, by not doing it. That sounds like a big way that this kinda goes wrong right off the bat. What do you think, George?
George B. Thomas:Obviously, what you said, like here's the thing. It's almost like I wanna 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.
George B. Thomas:Like, have clear goals. Like, what what are the goals of your voice of customer program? Right? The other thing is I think people will say, well, we've only got a hundred customers, or we've only like, for for us, I could say, we only have 15 customers per se. Like, let's just throw that out there as a number.
George B. Thomas:What what is why should I do VOC? Like, it makes sense for a big SaaS company that has, like, 600,000 cuss no. No. No. No.
George B. Thomas: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.
George B. Thomas: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.
George B. Thomas:And then we already we already alluded to this one, but, like, on the I don't wanna swear on this podcast. It's not it's I don't wanna get us canceled. I don't wanna be that guy. That's yeah. I have other people on this podcast for that.
George B. Thomas:But, like, just You are welcome. Yes. Yes. Noah thanks you for job security. It's like it's like act on the data.
George B. Thomas:Act on the conversations. Like, make the pivots and transitions on the insights that your brain now has that you didn't previously have. So I those are three. I I don't know. You guys might have more.
George B. Thomas:But that those are three that immediately come to my mind.
Liz Moorhead:Yeah. So we
Max Cohen:were saying what goes wrong? Well, I mean yeah. Like, one, thinking that, oh, 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 stuff.
Max Cohen:Like, it's all you need is customers if you have, like, any they have voices. They they talk. Right? And they say words, and you can hear them and make decisions based on those words. Right?
Max Cohen:So, like and we don't even have to I think, like, when we start calling it voice of the customer program, I think that scares a lot of people away because there might be some folks who are saying, like, hey. I can barely pay my salespeople. I don't have room for another program. And think of it as, like, voice of the customer efforts. Right?
Max Cohen: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.
Max Cohen: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, the 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.
Max Cohen: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.
Max Cohen:Right? Sun set. Yeah. Sun set.
Liz Moorhead:Rip timer, man. So rip to the goat. So I think yeah. Like, it it
Max Cohen: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? And sometimes it'll be like, yeah. People ask for it all the time. Right? Or it'll be like, I know people are gonna ask for this because I know what causes people to get really annoyed in HubSpot.
Max Cohen: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 gotta make a
Liz Moorhead:lot of decisions around a lot of the data and you gotta gut check your own sort of, beliefs on what
Max Cohen:you think your product needs, you think your service needs, this, that, and the other thing. And it's always really important to kinda, like, center yourself back down to, like, has anybody actually asked for this? Right? And and using that in the decision making process.
Liz Moorhead:I see that a lot on the sales enablement content side where, like, when I'm 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 gonna say?
George B. Thomas: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 a another m p three player or cassette player. Like and so sometimes when and I'm talking specific to, you know, products here, maybe even services.
George B. Thomas:But sometimes, you 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 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.
George B. Thomas: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 wanna get hate mail. But it is it is lessons delivered to you from the Humans. 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 we can't be afraid of that.
George B. Thomas:We have to embrace both lines of learning anyway. Uh-uh.
Liz Moorhead:Like I said in the chat, RIP, Microsoft Zune, because we needed another MP three player
George B. Thomas:from our MiniDisc player. Anybody remember the MiniDisc player? I bought one of those. Good lord. Why did I do that?
George B. Thomas:But We
Liz Moorhead:did a lot of things back then. Yeah. We did a lot
George B. Thomas:of things. I sure did.
Max Cohen:Rip eye banana.
Liz Moorhead:Moment of silence. Oh. Except not really. Yeah. No.
Liz Moorhead: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.
Liz Moorhead: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 Thick skin. Posture.
Max Cohen:Well, it's it's sounds scarier when we call it a program when it should just be you can do these tiny little efforts. It's just a change in the way you use feedback, though.
Liz Moorhead:Right? 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 wanna 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.
Liz Moorhead:Like, it's it's the it's the negative extreme of the Henry Ford and Steve's job Steve Jobs effect. Our customers just do not know what's best for them at all.
George B. Thomas:Yeah. Yeah.
Liz Moorhead:And so there's there's an openness to feedback you have to have.
Max Cohen:Yeah. True. It's
George B. Thomas: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 you just have to realize, like, it's you're gonna hear things you don't wanna 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 the fear of what we're talking about and put together the mini processes that feed this to you.
Max Cohen:And I think also too when it comes down to business, right, I think survival of the fittest and natural selection kinda comes into play. I think the companies that have evolved the ability to listen
George B. Thomas:Yeah.
Max Cohen:Listen listen to your customers, right, are the ones that are gonna 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.
Max Cohen:Mhmm. Right? And they chose to listen to that voice versus the ones that were just like, we're just gonna do things the way that we want. We're not gonna listen to our customer. Oh, we fell off the cliff, and we're dead, and we're gone.
Max Cohen:Right? You know? I mean, sure.
George B. Thomas:It's funny that they're
Max Cohen:dead. But Sure. It's scary to listen to your customers sometimes because you might get your feelings hurt. Well, hey, your feelings are gonna be much more hurt when no one's buying anything from you, and you're laying everybody off. Right?
Max Cohen:So it's like, what's worse?
George B. Thomas:Yeah. Bro, unemployment or being out of business is much more painful than listening to your customers.
Max Cohen:Yeah. I'd much rather read an NPS survey that's about a company and not me, myself, a human being Yeah. Right, than, you know, lose my job or, like, fail at hitting our metrics or, like, whatever. Right? Like yeah.
Liz Moorhead: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 wanna share with our audience if they wanna start digging deeper into this idea of voice of customer. Can you share those with us?
George B. Thomas: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.
George B. Thomas:I 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
Liz Moorhead:CX accelerator?
George B. Thomas: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 I'll call it a pillar page. It's a blog, but dang gone. Like, I was there for a hot minute.
George B. Thomas: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 a big number, but it's a big number and the article's big. But it's 12 voice of customer methodologies to generate a gold mine of customer feedback.
George B. Thomas: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 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 gonna have in the future of voice of employee.
Liz Moorhead:I'm very excited
George B. Thomas:about that. Pair with this voice of customer conversation we're having today.
Liz Moorhead: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.
George B. Thomas: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.
George B. Thomas: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.
George B. Thomas:And, literally, you are one voice of customer piece of information to 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.
Max Cohen:I didn't know if you I was waiting because I didn't know if you were gonna, like, end it on that.
George B. Thomas:No. No. Yeah.
Liz Moorhead:I mean I have something special.
George B. Thomas:I have something special, which, by the way, you didn't like Eminem when I said that, so I I I have I might have a different special thing for you. But next, what are your what are your thoughts?
Max Cohen:What are you thinking? Yeah. I mean, I think the 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.
Max Cohen:All you have to do is think a little bit differently about where you're applying the feet 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.
Max Cohen:There could be millions of ways to do it, but just start to ask 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 we 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 a again, it doesn't have to be a program.
Max Cohen:It doesn't have to be an 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?
Max Cohen:K? You go go figure it out. Alright? It's not rocket science. That's what I'm gonna say.
Liz Moorhead:Love
George B. Thomas: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.
George B. Thomas:And if the the person that tells me what voice I regenerated this in before I do the rest of the rap song on voice of customer, I'm I will buy them a, breakfast burrito at Dunkin' Donuts at in no. Yes.
Max Cohen:No. I've that in love.
Liz Moorhead:I thought they're nice, by the way. Burrito.
George B. Thomas:Yeah. Breakfast burrito at Dunkin' Donuts at inbound. Okay. So So this
Max Cohen:is a rapper's voice that
George B. Thomas:you need to aim around today? This is a rap song, that I'm going to rap slash read through. But I'm gonna give you the first line. You're gonna hit the buzzer, and you're gonna tell me who the rapper is because it's not Eminem because Liz had a visceral response to, like
Liz Moorhead:I actually really like Eminem. I was just more like, oh god. Is he gonna pretend to be Eminem? It was more of a like
George B. Thomas:a Yo. I'm not the goat. I can't rap like him. So no way. So ready?
George B. Thomas:Here it goes. Now this is a story all about how
Liz Moorhead:Fresh Prince.
Max Cohen:I mean,
George B. Thomas:Max, how did you get like, you you got torched, bro. Alright. So here it is.
Max Cohen:I thought you were gonna play audio.
George B. Thomas:No. No. No. No. It's not that
Liz Moorhead:we don't
Max Cohen:have that
Liz Moorhead:kind of budget. I get the breakfast burrito of destiny. You are a loser.
George B. Thomas:We 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 five star reviews to what's on your mind, we ain't just chilling. We're pressing rewind.
George B. Thomas:We flip the script when things go wrong. Customer service smooth like a nineties song. No assumptions here. Now we dig and explore. Peep in every detail, then you give you and then we give you more.
George B. Thomas:Now that's the first verse. 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 gonna do them all. But the chorus goes, so tell me how you feel.
George B. Thomas: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.
George B. Thomas:Then take action. Take action. Keeping it real. Alright? So I had to get the take action piece in.
George B. Thomas: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.
George B. Thomas:Okay, hub heroes. We've reached the end of another episode. Will Lord Lack continue to loom over the community, or will we be able to defeat him in the next episode of the Hub Heroes podcast? Make sure you tune in and find out in the next episode. Make sure you head over to the hubheroes.com to get the latest episodes and become part of the league of heroes.
George B. Thomas:FYI, if you're part of the league of heroes, you'll get the show notes right in your inbox, and they come with some hidden power up potential as well. Make sure you share this podcast with a friend. Leave a review if you like what you're listening to, and use the hashtag, hashtag hub euros podcast on any of the socials, and let us know what strategy conversation you'd like to listen into next. Until next time, when we meet and combine our forces, remember to be a happy, helpful, humble human, and, of course, always be looking for a way to be someone's hero.