If you’re not listening, you can’t learn

No, this is not something my old teacher used to say to me, although it could easily have been. This is something that has become increasingly important with the advent of social media.

That old adage, you’ve got two ears and one mouth, so use them in that ratio, now applies as much to businesses as it does to sales people. Customers have always had a voice, but it used to be much harder for them to have that voice heard. Now they have a myriad of ways to voice their views, and if you are not listening, you will miss critically important intelligence about your products and services, your competitors’ products and services, and the latest market trends.

Implementing a survey, if done correctly, can actually increase your customers’ propensity to buy, according to research quoted in this article: http://www.mycustomer.com/topic/customer-experience/what-questions-should-you-ask-your-customers-survey/162555. And you can use social intelligence to measure customer commitment, according to SDL in this blog article: http://www.sdl.com/community/blog/details/25349/the-limitations-of-traditional-kpis.

A “voice of the customer” initiative needs to embrace all forms of interaction with your customer so that you can ensure you really are listening to them, as this white paper from Confirmit explains http://confirmit.com/Confirmit/media/library/pdfs/Whitepapers/2012_07_06_WP_Are-you-listening_FINAL.pdf. Only then can you make informed decisions about how to respond.