I recently spoke to a friend who had developed a fabulous survey for her company at the request of the C-Suite. The survey had gone out, she had collected the results and organized them into easy-to-digest slides with the underlying detail provided. She recorded the presentation, so the C-Suite could watch it anytime.

No action. Time is precious so she waited.

Still no action. No explanation. Nothing. Not even a sincere thank you.

Eventually her boss told her that the higher-ups were ‘developing strategies’.

Voice of the Customer efforts are good:

• you have engaged customers
• you hear what you are doing well
• more brains are better than one
• you get excellent information for improvement

They can go wrong however, if you do nothing with the results:

• The time of the person who developed the survey has been wasted
• The time of customers who filled out the survey has been wasted
• The company is missing the opportunity for improvement

The worst part, the ugly aspect, is that making no changes that responders can see creates bad feeling. Don’t bother sending another survey or request for comment as people won’t want to waste their time. You also ruin morale in your office. My friend won’t be spending time on any future surveys. She feels her time and efforts were wasted. My friend is putting her resume together and setting up job alerts.

You might think that an automated message thanking responders is enough, but it isn’t. If people take the time, they want to see that their comments were heard.

In terms of knowledge management, VoC can be a powerful tool to iterate and create the next level of your program or product. More brains are better than one.