Insights of the Round Table
posted by: Nick Roman on 7/8/2010
This week I hosted a round table session at a Digital Marketing networking event in London. It was something of a daunting prospect for me, since my general dislike of people means networking doesn’t generally feature in my top 5 hobbies! However, it was really good fun, and very engaging. Who knew?
We had a very diverse group of industries represented around the (actually, not remotely round) table, though all the delegates were from Marketing backgrounds. The participant companies included; a leading supermarket, an upmarket hotel chain, a large global charity, a publisher, an insurance company and food travel specialists.
The title of the (not) round table session was “Customer Feedback: Making the Voice of the Customer Shout Louder”. The intention was to share some ideas, suggestions, best practices and possibly tales of woe from the delegates’ various forays into Voice of the Customer programs. When we started, we went around the table to learn more about each other, what our companies did and what specifically we wanted to get out of a Voice of the Customer program.
Initially, as we did the introductions, I was concerned that we’d never find any common ground and the whole thing would break down into awkward silence, mumbled suggestions and me rambling to fill the time. Shows what I know!
In fact, it was fascinating how similar the aims were, despite the variety of backgrounds. The word that came up most was “systematic”. Most people had some sort of customer feedback program in place, but they tended to be ad-hoc, thus providing limited value. What most people were looking for, was a way to create a program that would provide actionable insight. The amount of common ground also suggests that the whole Voice of the Customer “bandwagon” is not only being taken seriously by large companies, but is also becoming sufficiently well-recognized that people are looking for true best practice before cracking on with it.
The other interesting moment (I say “other”, there were lots, but I’m not offering a transcript here) was when I asked if, as senior marketing executives, they’d be prepared to stake their bonuses on a company customer satisfaction score, rather than only targeting the front line staff on that basis. This is something that some businesses have started to do, to build a customer-focused culture. As far as I could see, after a moment’s thought, all of them said they would. Again, this Voice of the Customer and Customer Experience stuff is being taken seriously.
We covered a lot of ground in the session, and eventually got kicked out of the room, otherwise we’d probably have carried on! I’d love to know what programs those companies do eventually set up, and what results they gain from them. I’m sure that creating such a program from scratch is a daunting proposition, but it was fantastic to see that people are really getting into it, and I hope the session helped a bit—even if only because I mostly kept my mouth shut. For once.
If you’ve got any thoughts, if you’re setting up a similar program, or indeed if you’re one of my new chums who attended the event and have anything to add – let me know!