Including customers in the process of (re)designing (new) products and services is central to user experience design and what better way than to harness customer voices and perceptions to drive product and service improvement and development.

But how best to achieve this?  It’s all about using the right listening techniques in the right context.

A whole range of widely-practiced research techniques can capture customer voices, both active and passive.  Capturing satisfaction feedback and scores and utilising panels of many colours is the stock in trade of the VoTC.  But it is the passive voice that is often overlooked.  The greatest advocates and detractors typically have the loudest voices, not least on social media.  Voices must not be left to be self-selecting – softer voices need to be paid attention to also.

By engaging with users collaboratively in panels, workshops and through observational techniques very valuable, meaningful insights can be drawn out, analysed and interpreted and then communicated most appropriately to achieve actionable outcomes.

It’s vital to avoid findings overload, and therefore, essential to prioritise and rank actionable insights that illuminate tactical and strategic imperatives that support the corporate, product and service vision.

Feedback should be tested iteratively, not least to ensure that the volume of feedback is not inadvertently up-scaled to be representative of “everyone”, in a variety of contexts over time and across places.

Empathetic user engagement, feedback and improving customer satisfaction can assume an iteratively virtuous circle of success for any organisation.  Good quality research is the foundation of this success.