Does your company seek a better understanding of the mindset of its customers? If so, which ones?  It's a important distinction and one which will determine the ultimate ROI of your VOC programs.

Do You Have To Listen To All Your Customers

Listen - YES, Adjust For - NO!

Your customers represent a wide range of different voices--with clear biases & perceptions of key things like value & price. Those biases & perceptions are what separate your non-central and central customers.

The strongest companies--from across industries--describe their ideal customers by a range of key characteristics and then use things like VOC programs to ensure they capture the inputs of those key customers.

What's Driving Your Company's Strategy

And which customers can help you to get where you're aiming?

Those in a nutshell represent "THE" in Voice of THE Customer.

It's about targeting those customers whose business value connects directly to your business goals and challenges.  A couple of example scenarios might help put it in perspective:

If your company is focused on increasing its average revenue per customer, then logically the customer voices you want to hear from are those who recognize and are willing to pay for value.

Similarly, if your challenge is gaining wider acceptance, then the voice of your early adopters may not be right one to guide your efforts.

Building a VOC program which effectively filters out the voices that you don't need to hear is a big hurdle in meeting the challenge

How Can Your Company Use This?

By ensuring that your VOC program is tailored to your most pressing business goals and challenges.  It's not an academic exercise or like a presidential opinion poll. It can (and should) be biased -- but only in one way -- towards the kind of insights that you can use.

Tactically, the key is to invest effort in determining which voices you are hearing -- by building it right into your VOC programs -- rather than solely focusing on things like response rate and % participation.  Let's repeat it again: it's Voice of THE Customer.