Episode Transcript
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Intro (00:01):
Do you live in a world filled with corporate data? Are
you plagued by siloeddepartments? Are your lackluster
growth strategies demolishingyour chances for success? Are
you held captive by the evilmenace Lord Lack? Lack of time,
lack of strategy, and lack ofthe most important and powerful
(00:24):
tool in your superhero toolbelt, knowledge.
Never fear, hub heroes. Getready to don your cape and mask,
move into action, and become thehub hero your organization
needs. Tune in each week to jointhe league of extraordinary
inbound heroes as we help youeducate, empower, and execute.
(00:50):
Hub Heroes, it's time to uniteand activate your powers. Before
we begin, we need to disclosethat Devin is currently employed
by HubSpot at the time of thisepisode's recording.
This podcast is in no wayaffiliated with or produced by
HubSpot, and the thoughts andopinions expressed by Devin
during the show are that of hisown and in no way represent
(01:10):
those of his employer.
George B. Thomas (01:11):
That was another thing, by the way,
before we dig, knee deep intothis that, Chad said is that how
about where's Devon been? Yeah.Because we miss him too. And I
agree, Chad. We missed the rantsabout text messaging.
Liz Moorhead (01:29):
Shower basins?
George B. Thomas (01:30):
Linked LinkedIn shower base yes. Tower
City shower basins, I think itwas, or something like that.
Tower City I don't remember.Anyway but, yes, Devin, if
you're listening to this, welove you. We miss you.
Liz Moorhead (01:43):
Can't wait to have you back.
George B. Thomas (01:44):
Hopefully, we'll see you at inbound, but,
yes, can't wait to have you backfor sure without a doubt.
Liz Moorhead (01:49):
Well, George, you already kinda let the cat out of
the bag for our live audiencejoining us here on Riverside
about what we're gonna betalking about today, bud.
George B. Thomas (01:56):
Yeah. I mean
Liz Moorhead (01:57):
You're just excited. And You can't
George B. Thomas (01:59):
be perfect all the time.
Liz Moorhead (02:00):
That's right. This is our once in a blue moon lack
of perfect perfection. Thisright here, ladies and
gentlemen, is the moment whereGeorge deviated. No. But to be
honest, my first point in thisoutline today is, George, this
is something you're superpassionate about.
We're talking about voice ofcustomer. Yeah. And I'd love to
give you just a little bit ofrunway before we get into
(02:21):
today's conversation to justlive in that joy, man.
Max Cohen (02:24):
Yeah.
Liz Moorhead (02:24):
We are so excited to talk about this today.
George B. Thomas (02:27):
Yeah. So, here's the thing, Liz. You know
for me, it's all about thehumans.
Liz Moorhead (02:34):
Oh, yeah.
George B. Thomas (02:34):
And the funny thing is that sometimes when
organizations, start to call
Liz Moorhead (02:41):
humans,
George B. Thomas (02:43):
prospects, leads, customers, and
evangelists, they forget thatthey're humans. And so when we
say voice of customer, what I'mreally saying is voice
Liz Moorhead (02:55):
of humans.
George B. Thomas (02:56):
Meaning, you're paying attention to the
fact of how people are engagingwith your products. You're
paying attention to how peopleare engaging with your brand.
You're paying attention. Like,you're paying attention.
Meaning, you're listening.
Meaning, you're probably askingquestions. By the way, if you're
an organization that doesn'tunderstand the power of asking
(03:20):
questions versus just dishingout advice, like, that's maybe a
first place to start. And here'sthe thing. If you hear the words
voice of customer or, like Ilike to say, voice of human, and
you immediately think, yeah. Wedo surveys.
No. Like, voice of customer, aVOC system is much more than
(03:45):
just we we do surveys every nowand then. Like so here's the
thing. Where I really got,ramped up, tuned in to this
whole conversation and startedto pay attention to it because,
again, it it did so much alignwith just the overarching, you
know, George b Thomas brand ofit's all about the humans is
(04:08):
when I did an interview withNate Brown, which, by the way,
this is a this is a we'll puthis LinkedIn, link in the
description of the show. He's ahe's a gentleman you should pay
attention to, but we did anentire interview when I was
doing the podcast for marketingprofs, the marketing smarts
podcast, a b to b businesspodcast.
(04:30):
And, man, the episode was juicy.Like, it was just so good. Like,
he had, that's hot. Like, I waswaiting for Max to hit that.
That's hot.
Max Cohen (04:41):
Oh, that's hot.
George B. Thomas (04:41):
Yeah. I was waiting for that, brother. Like,
it was just so good, and it wasso connective. Modern leaders,
if you're gonna be payingattention to modern customers,
their needs, their expectations,you have to be listening and you
have to be asking because youneed to be pivoting and and
(05:05):
transitioning into what it isthat they want, expect, and
dream of from your organization.That's why I love today's
conversation, Liz.
Liz Moorhead (05:16):
Well, then let's dig right into it. Because, Max,
I know before getting into this,you also said, hey. I'm hyped
about this discussion, whichmade me happy after last week's
all bound kerfuffle, verbalkerfuffle. But let's stick with
George.
George B. Thomas (05:30):
Which wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait.
Which, by the way, Max, did yousee in Slack, the little present
I left for you about Allbound.
Liz Moorhead (05:41):
You left him a present in Slack?
George B. Thomas (05:43):
There was a comment on a YouTube channel
that
Liz Moorhead (05:47):
said saw that.
George B. Thomas (05:48):
That said, I like this all bound thing. I'm
just gonna throw that out there.Not why we're here today, not
what we're talking about, but Iwas like,
Max Cohen (05:56):
I like
Liz Moorhead (05:57):
how you do that, George. You just throw a little
grenade out there. We're nothere to talk about this today,
Max. Yeah. But here you go.
George B. Thomas (06:03):
I feel heard. I feel seen. Anyway
Liz Moorhead (06:07):
That's the voice of your customer.
Max Cohen (06:09):
Point there just to see, hey, Max. Someone else
likes it or just I didn'tunderstand the the what you were
trying to get across with all
George B. Thomas (06:17):
of the digital rib punch. Like, you're
Max Cohen (06:20):
not teaching.
Liz Moorhead (06:21):
Yeah. You see other people like,
Max Cohen (06:23):
I get it. I get it. Tonight.
Liz Moorhead (06:27):
Tonight. Oh, yeah. Let's get back to the love
George B. Thomas (06:29):
fest. Wow.
Max Cohen (06:30):
Good to know.
Liz Moorhead (06:31):
You've already started talking about why you
like it, what got you excitedabout this topic, but start this
journey for us today. Right?When I say voice of customer,
where does your brain go?Specifically, what is it? Why
are we here having thisconversation today?
What are we talking about?
George B. Thomas (06:45):
Yeah. Yeah. So, again, I kind of alluded to
this about how, like,immediately people might think
of, like, yeah. We do surveys. Iwant you to open up, the mind,
the eye, the dream, the vision,the mission of voice of customer
and realize, a, it's a process.
(07:07):
A process is focusing oncapturing, one, analyzing, two,
and then acting, which, by theway, the part that really
frustrates me is when people arelike, we listen to them. We just
don't do anything with it. Like,come on. So it's capturing,
analyzing, and acting, oncustomer feedback to better
(07:30):
understand, again, like I said,their needs, their preferences,
their dreams, their desires,their experiences, their
expectations. And it is allabout gathering these insights.
And it's not just feedback,like, just surveys. It's
literally, are you doing sociallistening? Do you have any type
(07:52):
of, like, behavior analysisgoing on? Are are we looking at,
emails over time? Like, there'sa bunch of different platforms
and a bunch of different waysthat we can be capturing,
analyzing, and acting on thesethings that we're getting from
our, customers, our our humans.
(08:16):
Because what we're trying to dois we're trying to, improve the
products. We're trying toimprove the services. We're
trying to improve therelationship and make it more of
an align or alignment betweenthe business and the strategies
and the customer. Like, when westart to have that, mindset,
(08:39):
it's like and, again, I'm Idon't know what's up with me
lately, but it's like this threeangle view of action. Now all of
a sudden, we we start to realizethat this is actually the engine
that drives the 1% better, 10%better, 50% better each week,
quarter, year, because this iswhat gives us the fuel and the
(09:03):
the measurement to actually takeour momentum and put it in the
right direction, not just anydirection.
Liz Moorhead (09:12):
Max, I wanna turn to you now because, you know, I
when I was originallystructuring this conversation
immediately to my mind, I'm I'mhaving flashbacks already to the
previous episode of All Bound.Right? And you said at the start
of this, no. No. No.
This is not like last week. Thisis not like last week where Max
was unhappy, and we were talkingabout semantics and all that
(09:32):
stuff. And instead, he said, no.I like this conversation. I'm
excited about this conversation.
So what is the difference foryou? Because I've actually heard
people say, voice of customer.We're already doing this. It's
applying the label to somethingthat already exists. It's not
really.
So, Max, how is this differentfor you? Why to you is this
something that's worthy ofdiscussion? What excites you
(09:54):
about it?
Max Cohen (09:54):
So when when when I think of, like, voice of the
customer stuff, and I think,like, there's there's small ways
to, quote, unquote, do voice ofthe customer stuff, and I think
there's, like, bigger ways ofdoing voice of the customer
stuff. I think the one, like,fundamental thing that, like,
ties any of those levels inwhich you would do voice of the
(10:15):
customer stuff is that, like,there's a big difference
between, like, oh, we do surveysand we listen to feedback.
There's a big difference betweenthat and giving your customers a
seat at the table. Right?Because when we talk about voice
of the customer, it's where areyou hearing that voice and when
(10:36):
are you hearing that voice?
And the difference is you'reeither hearing that voice after
decisions have been made, oryou're taking that voice into
account before decisions aremade. Right? Like, so for
example, without me even like, Idon't have a role here called,
like, voice of the customer.Right? But when it comes to any
of the stuff that we do aroundproduct development, right, one
(10:59):
thing that I unabashedly knowthat I am really, really, really
good at is being able to think,like, 12 steps ahead and knowing
what HubSpot customers complainabout inside of HubSpot.
Right? So, like, I'm really,really good at saying, hey, if
we do something this way, we aregoing to get people to end up
(11:20):
eventually complaining aboutthis thing. Right? And so even
though that's, like, a reallysmall example of it, right, what
we're doing is we're taking whatwe know the customer is going to
voice, right, or, you know, havedistress about or gonna like,
not gonna like, or whatever. Andwe're applying that to a
(11:41):
decision we haven't madealready.
Right? And take that intoconsideration before we do make
the decision versus just, let'sbuild it the way we want it.
Right? And then get feedback onit after and then have to go
back to the drawing board. Ithink it's, like, a very micro
example of it.
Right? You know, and then youstart to see, like, other
customers where they have whole,like, roles and teams and
(12:03):
programs, like, based on voiceof the customer. Like, HubSpot
does it. Like, there's literallypeople there who have roles that
are all about voice of thecustomer. Right?
And, like, yep. The whole ideabehind that, you see you know, a
good example of that is, like,you see the, like, the partner
advisory boards, the customeradvisory boards, like, very,
very intentional efforts. Youknow? And I'm not saying every
(12:24):
small business is gonna do this.Right?
Like, keep in mind, I'm I'musing HubSpot as an example
here. Right? But, like, they puttogether very intentional
programs to say, like, hey. Howdo we bring in our customers and
get, like, a really goodcollective understanding of
their sentiment and how they'refeeling and then take all that
information and use that as wego and make decisions in the
future and change programs andstuff like that versus, like,
(12:46):
this is what we think is right.Let's go do it, and let's go get
feedback.
Don't get me wrong. That happensa lot. Right? But, like, you
know, another really goodexample that HubSpot does when
it comes to voice of thecustomer stuff is, like, the
ideas for them. Like, you'reliterally using Yeah.
You're literally use you'reliterally letting your customers
dictate the direction of theproduct, which is just, like,
talk about giving them a voiceat the table. You're quite
(13:08):
literally giving them a voice atthe table that dictates how this
product gets developed and getsbuilt.
Liz Moorhead (13:13):
Chad actually shouted that out in the comment
here. HubSpot project managementteam is always willing to have
Zoom meetings during beta duringfeature design for something
upcoming. I love that they'rewilling to take this time to
hear me out. Yes.
George B. Thomas (13:24):
So I wanna dive into that right there
because here's the thing. I havehad, which I know Chad has, Max,
you probably well, on the otherside of this. But, like, I've
had the opportunity to be theguy that they reach out to to
ask to have calls with. And I'malways like, yeah. Absolutely.
I'll I'll brainstorm, and youcan show me stuff and, like,
(13:46):
without a doubt. Every singletime I leave one of those calls,
I feel valued. I feel at a adeeper level part of the
community. I feel like I've madean impact. What's funny is
because they are, using a voiceof customer, because they're as
(14:08):
you so, eloquently said, givingus a seat at the table, I feel
like I'm more than just acustomer.
I feel like I'm a
Max Cohen (14:21):
human,
George B. Thomas (14:22):
and I'm part of the team. And now all of a
sudden, like, I'm more investedin the journey and the change
and the updates in the ecosystemand the methodologies because
I'm not sitting at somebody,just sitting in a dining room
all alone eating their lobsterand steak dinner. I've been
(14:44):
invited to come and eat thelobster and steak dinner with
them. And that's like, where I'mgoing with this is voice of
customer, we could talk about itlike it's a very selfish thing
internally for organizations.But I want you to realize when
done right, the emotionalresponses that it will invoke in
the people who actually arealready embracing your products,
(15:07):
services, and you as humanbeings in an organization.
Max Cohen (15:12):
Yeah. And I think the other thing too is, like,
everyone can do it in their ownway. Like, I think the basic
framework is, you know, voice ofthe customer means being
proactive with feedback beforedecisions are made, whereas most
folks are reactive to feedbackafter decisions are made. Right?
And I think it's, like, youdon't have to go put together
(15:35):
like, the the small businesslistening to this, guys, you
don't need to go put together acustomer advisory council for
your bean company.
George B. Thomas (15:45):
Yeah.
Max Cohen (15:46):
Right? But there is Bean. Copy. Whatever it is.
Liz Moorhead (15:50):
You know what I mean? Yeah. Like, you don't have
to do that. But But but
Max Cohen (15:56):
what you can do is is before you make some big
decisions, you can go talk toyour customers and see how they
feel about them. Right? Likethat like, sometimes it's just a
switch like that versus, like,we did it. Can we have your
feedback? It's more so, we'regonna do it.
We'd like to hear your thoughtson this first. Right? Like,
(16:18):
there's small, very attainable,approachable, accessible ways of
doing that. You don't need acustomer advisory board. Right?
Like, again, it's sometimes,it's just asking questions
before decisions are made versusafter.
George B. Thomas (16:32):
It's so interesting where my brain goes,
Max, when you say that becauseand and I would say right now,
just, like, in this moment, I'mlike, oh, shoot. Like, that's
the culture that I would wannabuild is a build it with them
versus a build it for themmentality. Like Yeah. Having
them come along every step ofthe way, which, again, I'm so
(16:53):
glad you brought upideas.HubSpot.com because that
is such a proactive way to havevoice of customer and such a
good way to build with insteadof build for. Because sometimes
we'll get in our ivory tower andwe'll start to build for, and we
we actually build a big pile of,like, it's just a big turd, and
(17:14):
then all of a sudden, there's abunch of people in your
organization trying to polish aturd.
And guess what? It's still aturd. But if we would have
stopped and we would havelistened and we would have asked
questions and we would have hada built with mentality instead
of a four, we would have been ina way different place.
Max Cohen (17:35):
Yeah. And this this reminds me a lot of about the
conversation that we had around,like, the delight stage of the
inbound methodology where Yeah.You know, a lot of people might
hear about it and go, oh, thatsounds very kumbaya. And, yeah,
the customer is always right andbe nice to your customers. Well,
it but it's like, no.
There is a, a very importantkind of business strategy behind
(17:55):
legitimately taking care ofpeople versus creating a bunch
of detractors. Right? You canapply that same logic to this.
Right? Wouldn't you rather getfeedback before you do something
and do it the right way versuswasting time doing it wrong and
then getting feedback about howyou have to change it?
Right? Yeah. Because, like, what
Liz Moorhead (18:14):
bad says here, sometimes you end up building
and optimizing a thing thatsimply shouldn't exist because
you didn't ask your audience orcustomer if it would be helpful
for that's my favorite question.Right, George? You hear me say
this all the time. Are wesolving a real problem, or are
we solving an imagined one? Haveyou considered asking the
customer to find out?
Out?
Max Cohen (18:30):
Yeah. Who's asking for this? That's the that's the
big thing. Right?
George B. Thomas (18:33):
Yeah. Yeah. So good.
Liz Moorhead (18:36):
I love that. So let's we've already started
talking about some real worldexamples of VOC in the wild and
how it works well. But what aresome other examples, George or
Max, that you can think of thatreally articulate the value of
the type of work that we'retalking about here?
George B. Thomas (18:52):
Yeah. Do you mean from, like, organizational
standpoint, or do you mean, likelike, channels and usage? Like,
what When you asked thatquestion because I was kinda
torn. Like, immediately, Istarted to think of things like,
okay. Apple's which Mac's,historically working in Apple.
Like, Apple's customerexperience, you know, driven by,
(19:13):
like, voice of customer data or,like, Starbucks and then how
they tailor their products basedon customer feedback on those
products. Like so I went to,like, brands and and things that
I fundamentally know that theydo, but then there was this
other side tangent of, like,channels and usage to this
question. So, Liz, like, whichdirection?
Liz Moorhead (19:34):
Either. What do you think is the most valuable?
What is the one you think whenyou think of our audience right?
Because I think your follow-upquestion brings up a very valid
point. We love the idea of voiceof customer work.
But when you're a small ormedium sized business who is
looking at inboundmethodologies, the way you grow
your business through marketingand sales, what is the most
valuable? Because I think andthis is true, I think, of any
(19:57):
principle or any strategicobjective that we talk about.
Right? There is a very differentpractical application set of of
tactics that you engage in ifyou're a Starbucks versus a
small or medium sized businessin Ohio. Do you know what I
mean?
Yeah. Yeah. That's that's anapples and bananas type of
thing.
George B. Thomas (20:17):
Yeah. Interesting that you brought up
Ohio. But, anyway, they theycould have been in Montana or
Texas as well. I'll just throwthat out there. Any state.
They could be in whatever theylive in. Yes. They could have
been in King Arthur's Court aswell on Merlin Drive. Anyway,
totally, people are like, whatthe are you talking about? So
here's the thing.
(20:37):
Stay tuned. We'll tell you moreat a later date. But but here's
the thing. I think that it'salways good to have a, North
Star or or something that youcan look at. So, like, it might
be the Apple.
It might be the Starbucks. Itmight be something else that you
find as far as a real world,case study or or usage. But
(21:01):
where I go with thisconversation because and I think
it's why I made the kind of jokeabout, like, we do surveys
sometimes, is that I thinkchannels, is a very important
piece of this when I think aboutreal world examples. Because,
yes, you should be doingsurveys. It's honestly like
table stakes.
(21:21):
And, yes, you can use HubSpotService Hub to do said surveys.
But I would say surveys andpolls. Like, so are you, do you
have a community that you canpoll them? Are you doing
LinkedIn polls? Are you doing,like like, wherever you can kind
of get the that type of data,are you doing that?
(21:42):
I also go to social listening aspart of this. And, by the way,
have you checked out HubSpot'ssocial listening tools lately?
Because while it used to just beTwitter, it's no longer just
Twitter. Like, you can literallydo Instagram listening and
LinkedIn and, if I remembercorrectly, maybe Facebook. Is
anyway, there's more channelsthat you can do social listening
(22:04):
with HubSpot, and you can getvery targeted to the things that
you wanna listen to.
And what I love is you can baseit off of a list, which could
Liz Moorhead (22:15):
be
George B. Thomas (22:15):
your customer or your Human. List. Right? So,
like
Max Cohen (22:21):
That one was a lot more gurgly than me.
Liz Moorhead (22:24):
That one. I I That was angry.
George B. Thomas (22:25):
As I was saying it, I was like, that's a
little aggressive. I might havescared myself.
Liz Moorhead (22:30):
V o
George B. Thomas (22:30):
c angry, kid. But
Max Cohen (22:32):
Well, no.
George B. Thomas (22:33):
No. I'm telling you. But but here's the
thing. Like, so Rob Zombie,
Liz Moorhead (22:38):
voice of customer advocate.
George B. Thomas (22:39):
Right. Right.
Liz Moorhead (22:41):
Yo. But Chad just type Chad just type. That wasn't
the voice of the customer. Thatwas the voice of indigestion.
George B. Thomas (22:49):
That was, like, Friday at almost end of
day voice.
Max Cohen (22:52):
That was the Mucinex guy doing
Liz Moorhead (22:54):
thriving guy.
Max Cohen (22:55):
Doing mon that was the Mucinex guy doing Mongolian
throat singing is what that was.
George B. Thomas (22:59):
Oh, that's funny. So so social listening,
but I also think about, like,support interactions. Like, you
have, hopefully, in yourorganization, somebody that is
on the other end of the salesprocess supporting your
products, your services, yourteams. And so, like, are you
capturing that information? Somy brain immediately goes to,
(23:21):
like, are you looking athistorical tickets and, like,
information that's being dumpedinto them when it's closed?
Are you looking at notes, thatmight be in tickets? Heck, are
you using HubSpot's callingfeature and being able to go
back and listen or watchdepending on how you're
supporting humans thatinformation and be able to like
(23:43):
like or Gong. I don't I'm not,like, heck, we're a HubSpot kind
of focused show, but, like, mypoint is, are you paying
attention to historical tickets,historical calls, where the
voice of customers are alreadyhappening, and then, like, you
gotta get to the sweet stuffmost of the time? Like, are you
(24:04):
taking into account onlinereviews and, like, testimonials?
Because now, you have a placeand especially if we add in,
like, an ideas.HubSpot orideasyourbusiness.com, now
you've got a proactive way thatyou're getting things from
people who are using your stuff.
You're doing surveys and pollsalong the way. You're listening
to what your customers areseeing on social. You're looking
(24:25):
at historical data in ticketsand calls, and now you're also
getting the flood of, hopefully,reviews, good, bad, ugly maybe.
By the way, address the uglyreviews too because at least
then you're, like, seeing themand being human while it's
happening in front of the entireworld that happens to see those.
But then leverage the positiveones for your your website and
(24:49):
different places like that.
But so that's where I think of,like, real world examples. It's
like all the places that youcould be playing, but here's the
thing. How do you take that andzone it into one area that you
can pay attention to that thenbecomes the main bank of voice
of customer information and datathat can be analyzed? Because
(25:12):
this part I'm talking aboutcapture. Here's all the capture
places.
How can it be analyzed? And thenthe most important piece of and
how do you build, and here's theactions we're gonna take based
on what is now heard.
Max Cohen (25:27):
Yep. Do something with it is the point. Like, it's
not voice of the customer if thevoice isn't actually being acted
upon. Right?
George B. Thomas (25:36):
It's like when you clean your room, but all
your issues in your closet, andthen your mom opens your closet
door and all the stuff fallsout.
Liz Moorhead (25:42):
That's hurtful. What an attack. We don't need to
say that to Liz out loud rightnow.
George B. Thomas (25:47):
I mean What? Hurtful? If it's if it's that's
your life, I mean Hey. Yeah.Anyway, I'm not trying to get in
a fight on this episode.
I've done that in past episodes.It never works out well.
Max Cohen (25:58):
Get into a fight?
Liz Moorhead (25:59):
Says the guy who said, hey, Max. Did you see that
thing in Slack where Iintentionally tried to poke the
bear
George B. Thomas (26:03):
with it? This episode? Did I do that this
episode?
Liz Moorhead (26:06):
You know, it's fine. It's fine.
George B. Thomas (26:09):
I should shoot out a little.
Liz Moorhead (26:11):
Yeah. No. I think, George, you mean, you're there's
all these different ways thatyou can collect it, but the
question is is,
Max Cohen (26:16):
like, are you actually doing anything with it,
and
Liz Moorhead (26:19):
are you using it to influence decisions that
Max Cohen (26:21):
you're making? Right? Because a lot of the time,
people aren't doing that.
Liz Moorhead (26:24):
Right? The other thing too, like, you know, I
think we have this HubSpot blogpost that we're meeting people
too. And, you know, one of
Max Cohen (26:32):
the examples that they give is a way to collect
feedback is obviously NetPromoter Score. Right? And I
think, like, you know, it's it'sone thing. Like, people
oftentimes, you know, whenpeople see, like,
Liz Moorhead (26:43):
oh, they gave us a, you know, a a a 10 or a nine
or whatever, they were like apromoter.
Max Cohen (26:48):
Right? What's the first thing we do with that? We
go, oh, let's let's see ifthey'll actually refer us to
somebody. And, like, that's whatthey use that data for. Right?
They'll go, oh, great. Thisperson said they're highly rec
like, likely to recommend us tosomebody. Let's go send them a
refer a friend email or some ortell them to go leave a review
or something like that. Right?We're just kind of, like,
(27:10):
redirecting this potential juicygood feedback that they can give
us into, like, hey.
Could you help help us sell tosomebody else? Or can you go,
like, tell the world thatmessage instead of just leaving
it in our Net Promoter Scoreinbox? Right? The thing that I
think we're missing there,right, is that if you just said,
hey. Saw you gave a greatreview.
(27:31):
I'd actually love to understandthat even more. Would you like
to just have a thirty minutechat with me? Right? Because
here's the thing. If if someonewas to get themselves into a
mindset of, like, oh, yeah.
I'd stake my reputation onrecommending this product
service business or whatever toother people, right, Chances are
(27:56):
they have some really goodreasons why they feel that way,
which would be good for you toknow, one. Right? And two, even
though they really, really likeyou, they probably have some
good ideas on what would make iteven better, what would
continue, or what would whatwould make me continue being a
(28:17):
promoter, and what would take mefrom a promoter to a detractor.
Right? They probably have somepretty strong opinions on that
stuff.
Right? So, like, one thing Iwould recommend is, like, an
easy low hanging fruit exampleof something you can do. If
you're a company that'scollecting Net Promoter Score
(28:37):
information on your customers,maybe do a little bit more than
just saying, hey. Can youintroduce me to a friend? Right?
How about you introduce me tosome ideas that you have in your
head? Right? So we can figureout what could we do to be even
better, what can we do to keepyou a promoter, and what should
we not do to one day turn youinto a detractor. Right? So you
(29:01):
can use all that information toguide the decisions that for,
you know, no uncertain termsmakes your customers promoters
or detractors or passive.
Right? So I think it's just likeanother way of just kind of
looking at this feedback you'realready getting, and it all
comes down to just how you'reusing it a little bit
(29:22):
differently, right, or how youcan use it a little bit
differently to, like, reallymake it true voice of the
customer instead of, oh, this issome feedback we got. Yep. We're
doing a good job. Right?
But it's there's so much morepast, yeah, we're doing a good
job. It's like, you know, whyare we doing a good job? How can
we do even better? What's gonnakeep us doing a good job? Right?
(29:43):
That kind of stuff. And I thinkthere's probably deeper
conversations sitting behindthose nine and ten net promoter
scores other than this is myfriend, Jeff, and he might also
like to buy what you have.Right? Or can
Liz Moorhead (29:56):
we get a testimonial thing?
Max Cohen (29:58):
Yeah. Can we get a testimonial? Yeah. I love it.
This.
Liz Moorhead (30:01):
So let's flip the script here a little bit. I
wanna talk a little
George B. Thomas (30:04):
bit the script. That's right.
Liz Moorhead (30:06):
There you got your rapping, and
George B. Thomas (30:08):
you did it. No. No. No. No.
You did it. There there'll bemore.
Max Cohen (30:12):
Oh, god. Oh,
Liz Moorhead (30:13):
no. Okay. Fantastic. That's not at all
terrifying.
George B. Thomas (30:18):
And it may or may not be in the voice and tone
of Eminem.
Liz Moorhead (30:23):
I find not dry heaving. I'm fine and not dry
heaving. Okay. So I want to flipflip flip the script here a
little bit and talk about wherevoice of customer work goes
wrong. And and and I wanna startthis part by saying where my
immediate my where my brainimmediately goes based on what
I'm hearing is, first of all,where does voice of customer
work go wrong?
By avoiding it, by not doing it.That sounds like a big way that
(30:46):
this kinda goes wrong right offthe bat. What do you think,
George?
George B. Thomas (30:50):
Obviously, what you said, like here's the
thing. It's almost like I wannalean into how earlier we said
building a product thatshouldn't exist based on not,
like, paying attention. Don'tjust gather feedback. Don't just
(31:11):
take polls. Don't just do sociallistening to do it.
Like, have clear goals. Like,what what are the goals of your
voice of customer program?Right? The other thing is I
think people will say, well,we've only got a hundred
(31:37):
customers, or we've only like,for for us, I could say, we only
have 15 customers per se. Like,let's just throw that out there
as a number.
What what is why should I doVOC? Like, it makes sense for a
big SaaS company that has, like,600,000 cuss no. No. No. No.
No. Because here's the thing.What they're trying to do or
(31:59):
what their brain might be goingafter is, like, voice of
customer equals quantity. That'sa falsality. Voice of customer
equals quality.
If I get 15 quality insightsfrom 15 conversations, I don't
need to have 500 more. Now wouldI have 500 more? Sure. If it was
(32:23):
formulated in a way that theoutcome was quality insights
versus a bunch of quantity junk.So, right, it's clear goals, and
then it's this idea of qualityversus quantity of what you're
trying to get.
And then we already we alreadyalluded to this one, but, like,
on the I don't wanna swear onthis podcast. It's not it's I
(32:46):
don't wanna get us canceled. Idon't wanna be that guy. That's
yeah. I have other people onthis podcast for that.
But, like, just You are welcome.Yes. Yes. Noah thanks you for
job security. It's like it'slike act on the data.
Act on the conversations. Like,make the pivots and transitions
(33:11):
on the insights that your brainnow has that you didn't
previously have. So I those arethree. I I don't know. You guys
might have more.
But that those are three thatimmediately come to my mind.
Liz Moorhead (33:23):
Yeah. So we
Max Cohen (33:24):
were saying what goes wrong? Well, I mean yeah. Like,
one, thinking that, oh, I haveto be a certain type of business
or I have to be a certain sizebusiness to do any sort of voice
of the customer work is insane.Like, if you have customers,
guess what? You can do voice ofthe customer stuff.
Like, it's all you need iscustomers if you have, like, any
(33:45):
they have voices. They theytalk. Right? And they say words,
and you can hear them and makedecisions based on those words.
Right?
So, like and we don't even haveto I think, like, when we start
calling it voice of the customerprogram, I think that scares a
lot of people away because theremight be some folks who are
saying, like, hey. I can barelypay my salespeople. I don't have
room for another program. Andthink of it as, like, voice of
the customer efforts. Right?
(34:06):
There are things you can do thatmake the voice of the customer
heard and get woven into yourdecision making process. Right?
But I think in terms of, like,what can go wrong. Right? You
know, if we do if you aredeveloping any kind of product
and when I say develop, I'm notmeaning, like, typing coding.
Like, I'm just saying buildingany sort of product, thinking of
the next iteration or how youcan make a product better, you
(34:29):
know, scope creep or whateverthe, you know, whatever the, the
the same term would be foranything that's not, like, you
know, building software. Tryingto do everything for everyone,
right, can be really tough.Because if you try to make a
product that does everything foreverybody, then all of a sudden,
it does nothing for nobody.Right? So being able to, like,
(34:52):
not only make sure you'rehearing those voices, but being
able to weigh those voices andbeing able to be comfortable
choosing what you are and arenot going to do based on those
voices.
Right? Because you might have areally, really loud customer
that really, really wantssomething. But, like, if that's
(35:13):
not something the majority ofthe customer voices you're
hearing, it might be somethingyou need to omit. Right? And you
have to make tough decisionsaround that.
Right? Sun set. Yeah. Sun set.
Liz Moorhead (35:25):
Rip timer, man. So rip to the goat. So I think
yeah. Like, it it
Max Cohen (35:31):
is one of those things, like, you know, whenever
we're building something andwe're talking about, like, a new
feature or something else theproducts can do, the best sort
of, like, voice of the customergut check that I get is, like,
when I hear from Connor or Ryansay, he'll say, has anybody
actually asked for this? Andsometimes it'll be like, yeah.
(35:55):
People ask for it all the time.Right? Or it'll be like, I know
people are gonna ask for thisbecause I know what causes
people to get really annoyed inHubSpot.
And then sometimes it's, No,nobody's asking for this, but I
know it would be really cool,and it's just something that I
don't think they know to ask foryet. Right? And, you know, you
start to get into these, like,weird places where it's, you
(36:18):
know, you gotta make a
Liz Moorhead (36:20):
lot of decisions around a lot of the data and you
gotta gut check your own sortof, beliefs on what
Max Cohen (36:25):
you think your product needs, you think your
service needs, this, that, andthe other thing. And it's always
really important to kinda, like,center yourself back down to,
like, has anybody actually askedfor this? Right? And and using
that in the decision makingprocess.
Liz Moorhead (36:38):
I see that a lot on the sales enablement content
side where, like, when I'mwhenever I'm doing, like, a,
brainstorm with them, it'll belike, are they actually asking
this question, or is this whatyou want them to be asking? But,
George, what were you gonna say?
George B. Thomas (36:51):
So it's it's interesting because, yes to
everything that we're talkingabout. But but what hit my brain
like a two by four on a, like,cold winter's day was the amount
of humans who are almost notwilling to follow their gut and
have the Henry Ford and SteveJobs moments. Because there is
(37:14):
the importance of voice ofcustomer and listening to the
customer, but sometimes theywanted a faster horse. Sometimes
they wanted a another m p threeplayer or cassette player. Like
and so sometimes when and I'mtalking specific to, you know,
products here, maybe evenservices.
(37:35):
But sometimes, you you have tostep out and take a chance to
transition to something thatmight be what they're looking
for before they're looking forit. Now here's what I think the
problem is that many peoplethink, well, we can't do that
because we might fail. Ladiesand gentlemen ladies and
gentlemen, here's the thing.It's not about failing. It's
(37:57):
about learning the lesson.
And by the way, the reason I'mbringing that up is because
that's one way you can learnlessons. But voice of customer,
it's lessons. It is literallyfree well, depending on if you
pay a team and all that becauseI don't wanna get hate mail. But
it is it is lessons delivered toyou from the Humans. But, also,
(38:20):
if you lean into what I amtalking about here with the
Henry Ford, the Steve Jobs, it'sjust lessons of life of doing
business, and we we can't beafraid of that.
We have to embrace both lines oflearning anyway. Uh-uh.
Liz Moorhead (38:35):
Like I said in the chat, RIP, Microsoft Zune,
because we needed another MPthree player
George B. Thomas (38:41):
from our MiniDisc player. Anybody
remember the MiniDisc player? Ibought one of those. Good lord.
Why did I do that?
But We
Liz Moorhead (38:48):
did a lot of things back then. Yeah. We did a
lot
George B. Thomas (38:50):
of things. I sure did.
Max Cohen (38:52):
Rip eye banana.
Liz Moorhead (38:53):
Moment of silence. Oh. Except not really. Yeah. No.
I love what you brought upthere, George, because I think
it's really important how tounderstand how we limit
ourselves. Because the other wayin which I could see this going
wrong is the reasons why wedon't engage this kind of work.
Right? Like, on the top level,in the superficial way, we might
(39:15):
say things like, oh, we don'thave time for another program.
We don't have time for this.
We don't have time for that. Arethose excuses because you're not
ready to hear from the voice ofthe customer? You're not ready
to hear what they have to say. Ithink it requires Thick skin.
Posture.
Max Cohen (39:29):
Well, it's it's sounds scarier when we call it a
program when it should just beyou can do these tiny little
efforts. It's just a change inthe way you use feedback,
though.
Liz Moorhead (39:39):
Right? Less of what I mean, Max. What I mean
more is, like, we will hidebehind excuses like, oh, it's
too difficult. It's toochallenging when the real spooky
scary reason is, well, I don'twanna open the door to feedback
from customers because what ifthey hate us? Or, like, there
are some organizational leaderswho are just straight up
resistant to change.
Like, it's it's the it's thenegative extreme of the Henry
(40:01):
Ford and Steve's job Steve Jobseffect. Our customers just do
not know what's best for them atall.
George B. Thomas (40:06):
Yeah. Yeah.
Liz Moorhead (40:07):
And so there's there's an openness to feedback
you have to have.
Max Cohen (40:11):
Yeah. True. It's
George B. Thomas (40:13):
and I don't know why my brain works this
way. I really don't, but it'salmost like there's two things
that are popping my brain. One,you have to have alligator skin
because you you just have torealize, like, it's you're gonna
hear things you don't wannahear, but it's out of that pain
that you're gonna be able tocreate something that is
absolutely amazing. And, youknow, not that alligators are
(40:35):
the most flexible things on theplanet, but that's the other
thing that came to my brain wasthe flexibility and the actual,
like, digital transformationbusiness gymnastics that this
voice of customer will enableyou if you have the thick
alligator skin to push throughthe fear of what we're talking
(40:57):
about and put together the miniprocesses that feed this to you.
Max Cohen (41:02):
And I think also too when it comes down to business,
right, I think survival of thefittest and natural selection
kinda comes into play. I thinkthe companies that have evolved
the ability to listen
George B. Thomas (41:21):
Yeah.
Max Cohen (41:21):
Listen listen to your customers, right, are the ones
that are gonna have a higherchance of survival than the ones
that don't. Because the onesthat don't keep going towards
the cliff. The ones that do turnaway from the cliff because they
heard that little voice of thecustomer saying, hey. Turn left.
(41:44):
Turn left away from the cliff.
Mhmm. Right? And they chose tolisten to that voice versus the
ones that were just like, we'rejust gonna do things the way
that we want. We're not gonnalisten to our customer. Oh, we
fell off the cliff, and we'redead, and we're gone.
Right? You know? I mean, sure.
George B. Thomas (41:58):
It's funny that they're
Max Cohen (42:00):
dead. But Sure. It's scary to listen to your
customers sometimes because youmight get your feelings hurt.
Well, hey, your feelings aregonna be much more hurt when no
one's buying anything from you,and you're laying everybody off.
Right?
So it's like, what's worse?
George B. Thomas (42:12):
Yeah. Bro, unemployment or being out of
business is much more painfulthan listening to your
customers.
Max Cohen (42:18):
Yeah. I'd much rather read an NPS survey that's about
a company and not me, myself, ahuman being Yeah. Right, than,
you know, lose my job or, like,fail at hitting our metrics or,
like, whatever. Right? Likeyeah.
Liz Moorhead (42:32):
So, George, I know this is a conversation that we
could literally run anothercouple hours on, and there's an
ex there are numerous resourcesthat I know you definitely wanna
share with our audience if theywanna start digging deeper into
this idea of voice of customer.Can you share those with us?
George B. Thomas (42:47):
Yeah. So, first of all, there is, Nate
Brown. I mentioned his nameearlier. You can search it. You
can literally look for thepodcast, episode we did.
I also did, like, I think, aFacebook live, going over that
podcast if you want the shortversion. There's also, and dang
(43:09):
it. If I don't have my shownotes up, but there's CX,
community which
Liz Moorhead (43:16):
CX accelerator?
George B. Thomas (43:17):
Yep. CX accelerator, which we'll put in
the show notes because that's aplace that you can, tune into
and kind of get moreinformation. And then, there's a
quite large I I'll call it apillar page. It's a blog, but
dang gone. Like, I was there fora hot minute.
(43:39):
HubSpot put it on and or createdit, and it has a bunch of tools
that you can dive into. It has abunch of questions that you
could be asking. They're reallysmart because they have a CTA
where you can download 61templates to do some of the
things that you're trying to dowhen it comes down to this voice
of customer. So, like,HubSpot's, 12, which, by the
(44:02):
way, sounds like it's not a abig number, but it's a big
number and the article's big.But it's 12 voice of customer
methodologies to generate a goldmine of customer feedback.
And so it goes deep into thechannels, goes deep into the
templates, goes deep into the,like, different softwares or
stuff that you could use. Sothat's a good resource. And and
(44:24):
I think those three places,other than just googling voice
of customer and doing your ownlittle journey on what that
means to you and yourorganization, are some of the
places I would send you first.Again, Nate Brown. Like, the
dude is, by the way, he's theinspiration for this episode and
(44:45):
for a future episode because Ican't wait, Liz, till we get to
the, conversation that we'regonna have in the future of
voice of employee.
Liz Moorhead (44:56):
I'm very excited
George B. Thomas (44:56):
about that. Pair with this voice of customer
conversation we're having today.
Liz Moorhead (45:01):
Outstanding. Well, George, land the plane. Take us
home. What do you want ourpeople to take away from this
conversation today? Because wecovered a lot of ground.
George B. Thomas (45:09):
Yeah. Start listening, start asking
questions, and start takingaction. Like, if if I were to
wrap up this thing, like, somany times we get stuck in the
weeds of the day in, day outdoing. I clock in. I get my
coffee.
(45:29):
I check my email. I design thisthing. I build this thing. I
watch this YouTube video whileI'm eating lunch. Then I check
my email, and we just easilyforget that there are hundreds,
if not thousands, if notmillions of humans wanting to
(45:51):
feel like they belong, wantingto feel like they're being
heard, wanting to feel likethey're being seen, and we're
just letting it all slip throughthe cracks.
And, literally, you are onevoice of customer piece of
information to the next greatidea that may explode your brand
or business to a place that younever thought it could achieve.
(46:14):
Max, it looks like you havesomething to say.
Max Cohen (46:17):
I didn't know if you I was waiting because I didn't
know if you were gonna, like,end it on that.
George B. Thomas (46:21):
No. No. Yeah.
Liz Moorhead (46:22):
I mean I have something special.
George B. Thomas (46:23):
I have something special, which, by the
way, you didn't like Eminem whenI said that, so I I I have I
might have a different specialthing for you. But next, what
are your what are your thoughts?
Max Cohen (46:34):
What are you thinking? Yeah. I mean, I think
the the thing much like many ofthe topics that are more
esoteric that we talk about onthis show, I think the big thing
would be is, like, don'toverthink it. Right? Everyone
can do this.
All you have to do is think alittle bit differently about
where you're applying the feetwhen sorry. When you're applying
(46:56):
the feedback that you'regetting. Right? Are you being
proactive with it? And juststart to ask yourself.
There could be millions of waysto do it, but just start to ask
ask yourself, what's thesimplest way that we could give
our customers a voice at thetable when we're making big
decisions that impact them? Andhow we can we take that into
account before we make thedecision. Every business can do
(47:18):
that in some way, shape, orform. Right? It doesn't have to
be a again, it doesn't have tobe a program.
It doesn't have to be anadvisory board. It doesn't have
to be something that iscompletely unique to specific
industries. Everybody has peoplethat give them money for
something, so you havecustomers. Those customers, for
(47:41):
the most part, can communicatewith you somehow. How do you
take that voice and apply it todecisions you're making that
have an impact on them beforethe decision is made?
K? You go go figure it out.Alright? It's not rocket
science. That's what I'm gonnasay.
Liz Moorhead (47:59):
Love
George B. Thomas (47:59):
it. So now let's play a game. Max, get your
hand close to the buzzer. Liz,get your hand close to the
buzzer. Because I regeneratedthis into another voice, and I'm
gonna read the first line.
And if the the person that tellsme what voice I regenerated this
(48:21):
in before I do the rest of therap song on voice of customer,
I'm I will buy them a, breakfastburrito at Dunkin' Donuts at in
no. Yes.
Max Cohen (48:35):
No. I've that in love.
Liz Moorhead (48:37):
I thought they're nice, by the way. Burrito.
George B. Thomas (48:39):
Yeah. Breakfast burrito at Dunkin'
Donuts at inbound. Okay. So Sothis
Max Cohen (48:44):
is a rapper's voice that
George B. Thomas (48:45):
you need to aim around today? This is a rap
song, that I'm going to rapslash read through. But I'm
gonna give you the first line.You're gonna hit the buzzer, and
you're gonna tell me who therapper is because it's not
Eminem because Liz had avisceral response to, like
Liz Moorhead (49:00):
I actually really like Eminem. I was just more
like, oh god. Is he gonnapretend to be Eminem? It was
more of a like
George B. Thomas (49:05):
a Yo. I'm not the goat. I can't rap like him.
So no way. So ready?
Here it goes. Now this is astory all about how
Liz Moorhead (49:14):
Fresh Prince.
Max Cohen (49:15):
I mean,
George B. Thomas (49:16):
Max, how did you get like, you you got
torched, bro. Alright. So hereit is.
Max Cohen (49:21):
I thought you were gonna play audio.
George B. Thomas (49:23):
No. No. No. No. It's not that
Liz Moorhead (49:25):
we don't
Max Cohen (49:25):
have that
Liz Moorhead (49:26):
kind of budget. I get the breakfast burrito of
destiny. You are a loser.
George B. Thomas (49:29):
We we don't have that kind of budget. But
so, so here we go. Now this is astory all about how your
feedback's the crown that werock right now. From five star
reviews to what's on your mind,we ain't just chilling. We're
pressing rewind.
We flip the script when thingsgo wrong. Customer service
smooth like a nineties song. Noassumptions here. Now we dig and
(49:51):
explore. Peep in every detail,then you give you and then we
give you more.
Now that's the first verse. ButI gotta I gotta do the chorus,
and I gotta share the bridgebecause they're hilarious. By
the way, there's other verses.I'm not gonna do them all. But
the chorus goes, so tell me howyou feel.
Don't hold it in. We're here tovibe with you. Let the convo
(50:12):
begin. We ask the rightquestions. No guessing the deal.
Then take action. Take action.Keeping it real. Alright? So I
had to get the take action piecein.
Now the bridge is it's a backand forth it's it's a back and
forth like a ping pong game. Youspeak, we groove, keep shaking
the frame. No canned response.We straight up flow. Innovation
(50:38):
together let the energy grow.
Okay, hub heroes. We've reachedthe end of another episode. Will
Lord Lack continue to loom overthe community, or will we be
able to defeat him in the nextepisode of the Hub Heroes
podcast? Make sure you tune inand find out in the next
(51:00):
episode. Make sure you head overto the hubheroes.com to get the
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FYI, if you're part of theleague of heroes, you'll get the
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(51:22):
and use the hashtag, hashtag hubeuros podcast on any of the
socials, and let us know whatstrategy conversation you'd like
to listen into next. Until nexttime, when we meet and combine
our forces, remember to be ahappy, helpful, humble human,
and, of course, always belooking for a way to be
someone's hero.
Do you live in a world filled with corporate data? Are
you plagued by siloeddepartments? Are your lackluster
growth strategies demolishingyour chances for success? Are
you held captive by the evilmenace Lord Lack? Lack of time,
lack of strategy, and lack ofthe most important and powerful
(00:24):
tool in your superhero toolbelt, knowledge.
Never fear, hub heroes. Getready to don your cape and mask,
move into action, and become thehub hero your organization
needs. Tune in each week to jointhe league of extraordinary
inbound heroes as we help youeducate, empower, and execute.
(00:50):
Hub Heroes, it's time to uniteand activate your powers. Before
we begin, we need to disclosethat Devin is currently employed
by HubSpot at the time of thisepisode's recording.
This podcast is in no wayaffiliated with or produced by
HubSpot, and the thoughts andopinions expressed by Devin
during the show are that of hisown and in no way represent
(01:10):
those of his employer.
George B. Thomas (01:11):
That was another thing, by the way,
before we dig, knee deep intothis that, Chad said is that how
about where's Devon been? Yeah.Because we miss him too. And I
agree, Chad. We missed the rantsabout text messaging.
Liz Moorhead (01:29):
Shower basins?
George B. Thomas (01:30):
Linked LinkedIn shower base yes. Tower
City shower basins, I think itwas, or something like that.
Tower City I don't remember.Anyway but, yes, Devin, if
you're listening to this, welove you. We miss you.
Liz Moorhead (01:43):
Can't wait to have you back.
George B. Thomas (01:44):
Hopefully, we'll see you at inbound, but,
yes, can't wait to have you backfor sure without a doubt.
Liz Moorhead (01:49):
Well, George, you already kinda let the cat out of
the bag for our live audiencejoining us here on Riverside
about what we're gonna betalking about today, bud.
George B. Thomas (01:56):
Yeah. I mean
Liz Moorhead (01:57):
You're just excited. And You can't
George B. Thomas (01:59):
be perfect all the time.
Liz Moorhead (02:00):
That's right. This is our once in a blue moon lack
of perfect perfection. Thisright here, ladies and
gentlemen, is the moment whereGeorge deviated. No. But to be
honest, my first point in thisoutline today is, George, this
is something you're superpassionate about.
We're talking about voice ofcustomer. Yeah. And I'd love to
give you just a little bit ofrunway before we get into
(02:21):
today's conversation to justlive in that joy, man.
Max Cohen (02:24):
Yeah.
Liz Moorhead (02:24):
We are so excited to talk about this today.
George B. Thomas (02:27):
Yeah. So, here's the thing, Liz. You know
for me, it's all about thehumans.
Liz Moorhead (02:34):
Oh, yeah.
George B. Thomas (02:34):
And the funny thing is that sometimes when
organizations, start to call
Liz Moorhead (02:41):
humans,
George B. Thomas (02:43):
prospects, leads, customers, and
evangelists, they forget thatthey're humans. And so when we
say voice of customer, what I'mreally saying is voice
Liz Moorhead (02:55):
of humans.
George B. Thomas (02:56):
Meaning, you're paying attention to the
fact of how people are engagingwith your products. You're
paying attention to how peopleare engaging with your brand.
You're paying attention. Like,you're paying attention.
Meaning, you're listening.
Meaning, you're probably askingquestions. By the way, if you're
an organization that doesn'tunderstand the power of asking
(03:20):
questions versus just dishingout advice, like, that's maybe a
first place to start. And here'sthe thing. If you hear the words
voice of customer or, like Ilike to say, voice of human, and
you immediately think, yeah. Wedo surveys.
No. Like, voice of customer, aVOC system is much more than
(03:45):
just we we do surveys every nowand then. Like so here's the
thing. Where I really got,ramped up, tuned in to this
whole conversation and startedto pay attention to it because,
again, it it did so much alignwith just the overarching, you
know, George b Thomas brand ofit's all about the humans is
(04:08):
when I did an interview withNate Brown, which, by the way,
this is a this is a we'll puthis LinkedIn, link in the
description of the show. He's ahe's a gentleman you should pay
attention to, but we did anentire interview when I was
doing the podcast for marketingprofs, the marketing smarts
podcast, a b to b businesspodcast.
(04:30):
And, man, the episode was juicy.Like, it was just so good. Like,
he had, that's hot. Like, I waswaiting for Max to hit that.
That's hot.
Max Cohen (04:41):
Oh, that's hot.
George B. Thomas (04:41):
Yeah. I was waiting for that, brother. Like,
it was just so good, and it wasso connective. Modern leaders,
if you're gonna be payingattention to modern customers,
their needs, their expectations,you have to be listening and you
have to be asking because youneed to be pivoting and and
(05:05):
transitioning into what it isthat they want, expect, and
dream of from your organization.That's why I love today's
conversation, Liz.
Liz Moorhead (05:16):
Well, then let's dig right into it. Because, Max,
I know before getting into this,you also said, hey. I'm hyped
about this discussion, whichmade me happy after last week's
all bound kerfuffle, verbalkerfuffle. But let's stick with
George.
George B. Thomas (05:30):
Which wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait.
Which, by the way, Max, did yousee in Slack, the little present
I left for you about Allbound.
Liz Moorhead (05:41):
You left him a present in Slack?
George B. Thomas (05:43):
There was a comment on a YouTube channel
that
Liz Moorhead (05:47):
said saw that.
George B. Thomas (05:48):
That said, I like this all bound thing. I'm
just gonna throw that out there.Not why we're here today, not
what we're talking about, but Iwas like,
Max Cohen (05:56):
I like
Liz Moorhead (05:57):
how you do that, George. You just throw a little
grenade out there. We're nothere to talk about this today,
Max. Yeah. But here you go.
George B. Thomas (06:03):
I feel heard. I feel seen. Anyway
Liz Moorhead (06:07):
That's the voice of your customer.
Max Cohen (06:09):
Point there just to see, hey, Max. Someone else
likes it or just I didn'tunderstand the the what you were
trying to get across with all
George B. Thomas (06:17):
of the digital rib punch. Like, you're
Max Cohen (06:20):
not teaching.
Liz Moorhead (06:21):
Yeah. You see other people like,
Max Cohen (06:23):
I get it. I get it. Tonight.
Liz Moorhead (06:27):
Tonight. Oh, yeah. Let's get back to the love
George B. Thomas (06:29):
fest. Wow.
Max Cohen (06:30):
Good to know.
Liz Moorhead (06:31):
You've already started talking about why you
like it, what got you excitedabout this topic, but start this
journey for us today. Right?When I say voice of customer,
where does your brain go?Specifically, what is it? Why
are we here having thisconversation today?
What are we talking about?
George B. Thomas (06:45):
Yeah. Yeah. So, again, I kind of alluded to
this about how, like,immediately people might think
of, like, yeah. We do surveys. Iwant you to open up, the mind,
the eye, the dream, the vision,the mission of voice of customer
and realize, a, it's a process.
(07:07):
A process is focusing oncapturing, one, analyzing, two,
and then acting, which, by theway, the part that really
frustrates me is when people arelike, we listen to them. We just
don't do anything with it. Like,come on. So it's capturing,
analyzing, and acting, oncustomer feedback to better
(07:30):
understand, again, like I said,their needs, their preferences,
their dreams, their desires,their experiences, their
expectations. And it is allabout gathering these insights.
And it's not just feedback,like, just surveys. It's
literally, are you doing sociallistening? Do you have any type
(07:52):
of, like, behavior analysisgoing on? Are are we looking at,
emails over time? Like, there'sa bunch of different platforms
and a bunch of different waysthat we can be capturing,
analyzing, and acting on thesethings that we're getting from
our, customers, our our humans.
(08:16):
Because what we're trying to dois we're trying to, improve the
products. We're trying toimprove the services. We're
trying to improve therelationship and make it more of
an align or alignment betweenthe business and the strategies
and the customer. Like, when westart to have that, mindset,
(08:39):
it's like and, again, I'm Idon't know what's up with me
lately, but it's like this threeangle view of action. Now all of
a sudden, we we start to realizethat this is actually the engine
that drives the 1% better, 10%better, 50% better each week,
quarter, year, because this iswhat gives us the fuel and the
(09:03):
the measurement to actually takeour momentum and put it in the
right direction, not just anydirection.
Liz Moorhead (09:12):
Max, I wanna turn to you now because, you know, I
when I was originallystructuring this conversation
immediately to my mind, I'm I'mhaving flashbacks already to the
previous episode of All Bound.Right? And you said at the start
of this, no. No. No.
This is not like last week. Thisis not like last week where Max
was unhappy, and we were talkingabout semantics and all that
(09:32):
stuff. And instead, he said, no.I like this conversation. I'm
excited about this conversation.
So what is the difference foryou? Because I've actually heard
people say, voice of customer.We're already doing this. It's
applying the label to somethingthat already exists. It's not
really.
So, Max, how is this differentfor you? Why to you is this
something that's worthy ofdiscussion? What excites you
(09:54):
about it?
Max Cohen (09:54):
So when when when I think of, like, voice of the
customer stuff, and I think,like, there's there's small ways
to, quote, unquote, do voice ofthe customer stuff, and I think
there's, like, bigger ways ofdoing voice of the customer
stuff. I think the one, like,fundamental thing that, like,
ties any of those levels inwhich you would do voice of the
(10:15):
customer stuff is that, like,there's a big difference
between, like, oh, we do surveysand we listen to feedback.
There's a big difference betweenthat and giving your customers a
seat at the table. Right?Because when we talk about voice
of the customer, it's where areyou hearing that voice and when
(10:36):
are you hearing that voice?
And the difference is you'reeither hearing that voice after
decisions have been made, oryou're taking that voice into
account before decisions aremade. Right? Like, so for
example, without me even like, Idon't have a role here called,
like, voice of the customer.Right? But when it comes to any
of the stuff that we do aroundproduct development, right, one
(10:59):
thing that I unabashedly knowthat I am really, really, really
good at is being able to think,like, 12 steps ahead and knowing
what HubSpot customers complainabout inside of HubSpot.
Right? So, like, I'm really,really good at saying, hey, if
we do something this way, we aregoing to get people to end up
(11:20):
eventually complaining aboutthis thing. Right? And so even
though that's, like, a reallysmall example of it, right, what
we're doing is we're taking whatwe know the customer is going to
voice, right, or, you know, havedistress about or gonna like,
not gonna like, or whatever. Andwe're applying that to a
(11:41):
decision we haven't madealready.
Right? And take that intoconsideration before we do make
the decision versus just, let'sbuild it the way we want it.
Right? And then get feedback onit after and then have to go
back to the drawing board. Ithink it's, like, a very micro
example of it.
Right? You know, and then youstart to see, like, other
customers where they have whole,like, roles and teams and
(12:03):
programs, like, based on voiceof the customer. Like, HubSpot
does it. Like, there's literallypeople there who have roles that
are all about voice of thecustomer. Right?
And, like, yep. The whole ideabehind that, you see you know, a
good example of that is, like,you see the, like, the partner
advisory boards, the customeradvisory boards, like, very,
very intentional efforts. Youknow? And I'm not saying every
(12:24):
small business is gonna do this.Right?
Like, keep in mind, I'm I'musing HubSpot as an example
here. Right? But, like, they puttogether very intentional
programs to say, like, hey. Howdo we bring in our customers and
get, like, a really goodcollective understanding of
their sentiment and how they'refeeling and then take all that
information and use that as wego and make decisions in the
future and change programs andstuff like that versus, like,
(12:46):
this is what we think is right.Let's go do it, and let's go get
feedback.
Don't get me wrong. That happensa lot. Right? But, like, you
know, another really goodexample that HubSpot does when
it comes to voice of thecustomer stuff is, like, the
ideas for them. Like, you'reliterally using Yeah.
You're literally use you'reliterally letting your customers
dictate the direction of theproduct, which is just, like,
talk about giving them a voiceat the table. You're quite
(13:08):
literally giving them a voice atthe table that dictates how this
product gets developed and getsbuilt.
Liz Moorhead (13:13):
Chad actually shouted that out in the comment
here. HubSpot project managementteam is always willing to have
Zoom meetings during beta duringfeature design for something
upcoming. I love that they'rewilling to take this time to
hear me out. Yes.
George B. Thomas (13:24):
So I wanna dive into that right there
because here's the thing. I havehad, which I know Chad has, Max,
you probably well, on the otherside of this. But, like, I've
had the opportunity to be theguy that they reach out to to
ask to have calls with. And I'malways like, yeah. Absolutely.
I'll I'll brainstorm, and youcan show me stuff and, like,
(13:46):
without a doubt. Every singletime I leave one of those calls,
I feel valued. I feel at a adeeper level part of the
community. I feel like I've madean impact. What's funny is
because they are, using a voiceof customer, because they're as
(14:08):
you so, eloquently said, givingus a seat at the table, I feel
like I'm more than just acustomer.
I feel like I'm a
Max Cohen (14:21):
human,
George B. Thomas (14:22):
and I'm part of the team. And now all of a
sudden, like, I'm more investedin the journey and the change
and the updates in the ecosystemand the methodologies because
I'm not sitting at somebody,just sitting in a dining room
all alone eating their lobsterand steak dinner. I've been
(14:44):
invited to come and eat thelobster and steak dinner with
them. And that's like, where I'mgoing with this is voice of
customer, we could talk about itlike it's a very selfish thing
internally for organizations.But I want you to realize when
done right, the emotionalresponses that it will invoke in
the people who actually arealready embracing your products,
(15:07):
services, and you as humanbeings in an organization.
Max Cohen (15:12):
Yeah. And I think the other thing too is, like,
everyone can do it in their ownway. Like, I think the basic
framework is, you know, voice ofthe customer means being
proactive with feedback beforedecisions are made, whereas most
folks are reactive to feedbackafter decisions are made. Right?
And I think it's, like, youdon't have to go put together
(15:35):
like, the the small businesslistening to this, guys, you
don't need to go put together acustomer advisory council for
your bean company.
George B. Thomas (15:45):
Yeah.
Max Cohen (15:46):
Right? But there is Bean. Copy. Whatever it is.
Liz Moorhead (15:50):
You know what I mean? Yeah. Like, you don't have
to do that. But But but
Max Cohen (15:56):
what you can do is is before you make some big
decisions, you can go talk toyour customers and see how they
feel about them. Right? Likethat like, sometimes it's just a
switch like that versus, like,we did it. Can we have your
feedback? It's more so, we'regonna do it.
We'd like to hear your thoughtson this first. Right? Like,
(16:18):
there's small, very attainable,approachable, accessible ways of
doing that. You don't need acustomer advisory board. Right?
Like, again, it's sometimes,it's just asking questions
before decisions are made versusafter.
George B. Thomas (16:32):
It's so interesting where my brain goes,
Max, when you say that becauseand and I would say right now,
just, like, in this moment, I'mlike, oh, shoot. Like, that's
the culture that I would wannabuild is a build it with them
versus a build it for themmentality. Like Yeah. Having
them come along every step ofthe way, which, again, I'm so
(16:53):
glad you brought upideas.HubSpot.com because that
is such a proactive way to havevoice of customer and such a
good way to build with insteadof build for. Because sometimes
we'll get in our ivory tower andwe'll start to build for, and we
we actually build a big pile of,like, it's just a big turd, and
(17:14):
then all of a sudden, there's abunch of people in your
organization trying to polish aturd.
And guess what? It's still aturd. But if we would have
stopped and we would havelistened and we would have asked
questions and we would have hada built with mentality instead
of a four, we would have been ina way different place.
Max Cohen (17:35):
Yeah. And this this reminds me a lot of about the
conversation that we had around,like, the delight stage of the
inbound methodology where Yeah.You know, a lot of people might
hear about it and go, oh, thatsounds very kumbaya. And, yeah,
the customer is always right andbe nice to your customers. Well,
it but it's like, no.
There is a, a very importantkind of business strategy behind
(17:55):
legitimately taking care ofpeople versus creating a bunch
of detractors. Right? You canapply that same logic to this.
Right? Wouldn't you rather getfeedback before you do something
and do it the right way versuswasting time doing it wrong and
then getting feedback about howyou have to change it?
Right? Yeah. Because, like, what
Liz Moorhead (18:14):
bad says here, sometimes you end up building
and optimizing a thing thatsimply shouldn't exist because
you didn't ask your audience orcustomer if it would be helpful
for that's my favorite question.Right, George? You hear me say
this all the time. Are wesolving a real problem, or are
we solving an imagined one? Haveyou considered asking the
customer to find out?
Out?
Max Cohen (18:30):
Yeah. Who's asking for this? That's the that's the
big thing. Right?
George B. Thomas (18:33):
Yeah. Yeah. So good.
Liz Moorhead (18:36):
I love that. So let's we've already started
talking about some real worldexamples of VOC in the wild and
how it works well. But what aresome other examples, George or
Max, that you can think of thatreally articulate the value of
the type of work that we'retalking about here?
George B. Thomas (18:52):
Yeah. Do you mean from, like, organizational
standpoint, or do you mean, likelike, channels and usage? Like,
what When you asked thatquestion because I was kinda
torn. Like, immediately, Istarted to think of things like,
okay. Apple's which Mac's,historically working in Apple.
Like, Apple's customerexperience, you know, driven by,
(19:13):
like, voice of customer data or,like, Starbucks and then how
they tailor their products basedon customer feedback on those
products. Like so I went to,like, brands and and things that
I fundamentally know that theydo, but then there was this
other side tangent of, like,channels and usage to this
question. So, Liz, like, whichdirection?
Liz Moorhead (19:34):
Either. What do you think is the most valuable?
What is the one you think whenyou think of our audience right?
Because I think your follow-upquestion brings up a very valid
point. We love the idea of voiceof customer work.
But when you're a small ormedium sized business who is
looking at inboundmethodologies, the way you grow
your business through marketingand sales, what is the most
valuable? Because I think andthis is true, I think, of any
(19:57):
principle or any strategicobjective that we talk about.
Right? There is a very differentpractical application set of of
tactics that you engage in ifyou're a Starbucks versus a
small or medium sized businessin Ohio. Do you know what I
mean?
Yeah. Yeah. That's that's anapples and bananas type of
thing.
George B. Thomas (20:17):
Yeah. Interesting that you brought up
Ohio. But, anyway, they theycould have been in Montana or
Texas as well. I'll just throwthat out there. Any state.
They could be in whatever theylive in. Yes. They could have
been in King Arthur's Court aswell on Merlin Drive. Anyway,
totally, people are like, whatthe are you talking about? So
here's the thing.
(20:37):
Stay tuned. We'll tell you moreat a later date. But but here's
the thing. I think that it'salways good to have a, North
Star or or something that youcan look at. So, like, it might
be the Apple.
It might be the Starbucks. Itmight be something else that you
find as far as a real world,case study or or usage. But
(21:01):
where I go with thisconversation because and I think
it's why I made the kind of jokeabout, like, we do surveys
sometimes, is that I thinkchannels, is a very important
piece of this when I think aboutreal world examples. Because,
yes, you should be doingsurveys. It's honestly like
table stakes.
(21:21):
And, yes, you can use HubSpotService Hub to do said surveys.
But I would say surveys andpolls. Like, so are you, do you
have a community that you canpoll them? Are you doing
LinkedIn polls? Are you doing,like like, wherever you can kind
of get the that type of data,are you doing that?
(21:42):
I also go to social listening aspart of this. And, by the way,
have you checked out HubSpot'ssocial listening tools lately?
Because while it used to just beTwitter, it's no longer just
Twitter. Like, you can literallydo Instagram listening and
LinkedIn and, if I remembercorrectly, maybe Facebook. Is
anyway, there's more channelsthat you can do social listening
(22:04):
with HubSpot, and you can getvery targeted to the things that
you wanna listen to.
And what I love is you can baseit off of a list, which could
Liz Moorhead (22:15):
be
George B. Thomas (22:15):
your customer or your Human. List. Right? So,
like
Max Cohen (22:21):
That one was a lot more gurgly than me.
Liz Moorhead (22:24):
That one. I I That was angry.
George B. Thomas (22:25):
As I was saying it, I was like, that's a
little aggressive. I might havescared myself.
Liz Moorhead (22:30):
V o
George B. Thomas (22:30):
c angry, kid. But
Max Cohen (22:32):
Well, no.
George B. Thomas (22:33):
No. I'm telling you. But but here's the
thing. Like, so Rob Zombie,
Liz Moorhead (22:38):
voice of customer advocate.
George B. Thomas (22:39):
Right. Right.
Liz Moorhead (22:41):
Yo. But Chad just type Chad just type. That wasn't
the voice of the customer. Thatwas the voice of indigestion.
George B. Thomas (22:49):
That was, like, Friday at almost end of
day voice.
Max Cohen (22:52):
That was the Mucinex guy doing
Liz Moorhead (22:54):
thriving guy.
Max Cohen (22:55):
Doing mon that was the Mucinex guy doing Mongolian
throat singing is what that was.
George B. Thomas (22:59):
Oh, that's funny. So so social listening,
but I also think about, like,support interactions. Like, you
have, hopefully, in yourorganization, somebody that is
on the other end of the salesprocess supporting your
products, your services, yourteams. And so, like, are you
capturing that information? Somy brain immediately goes to,
(23:21):
like, are you looking athistorical tickets and, like,
information that's being dumpedinto them when it's closed?
Are you looking at notes, thatmight be in tickets? Heck, are
you using HubSpot's callingfeature and being able to go
back and listen or watchdepending on how you're
supporting humans thatinformation and be able to like
(23:43):
like or Gong. I don't I'm not,like, heck, we're a HubSpot kind
of focused show, but, like, mypoint is, are you paying
attention to historical tickets,historical calls, where the
voice of customers are alreadyhappening, and then, like, you
gotta get to the sweet stuffmost of the time? Like, are you
(24:04):
taking into account onlinereviews and, like, testimonials?
Because now, you have a placeand especially if we add in,
like, an ideas.HubSpot orideasyourbusiness.com, now
you've got a proactive way thatyou're getting things from
people who are using your stuff.
You're doing surveys and pollsalong the way. You're listening
to what your customers areseeing on social. You're looking
(24:25):
at historical data in ticketsand calls, and now you're also
getting the flood of, hopefully,reviews, good, bad, ugly maybe.
By the way, address the uglyreviews too because at least
then you're, like, seeing themand being human while it's
happening in front of the entireworld that happens to see those.
But then leverage the positiveones for your your website and
(24:49):
different places like that.
But so that's where I think of,like, real world examples. It's
like all the places that youcould be playing, but here's the
thing. How do you take that andzone it into one area that you
can pay attention to that thenbecomes the main bank of voice
of customer information and datathat can be analyzed? Because
(25:12):
this part I'm talking aboutcapture. Here's all the capture
places.
How can it be analyzed? And thenthe most important piece of and
how do you build, and here's theactions we're gonna take based
on what is now heard.
Max Cohen (25:27):
Yep. Do something with it is the point. Like, it's
not voice of the customer if thevoice isn't actually being acted
upon. Right?
George B. Thomas (25:36):
It's like when you clean your room, but all
your issues in your closet, andthen your mom opens your closet
door and all the stuff fallsout.
Liz Moorhead (25:42):
That's hurtful. What an attack. We don't need to
say that to Liz out loud rightnow.
George B. Thomas (25:47):
I mean What? Hurtful? If it's if it's that's
your life, I mean Hey. Yeah.Anyway, I'm not trying to get in
a fight on this episode.
I've done that in past episodes.It never works out well.
Max Cohen (25:58):
Get into a fight?
Liz Moorhead (25:59):
Says the guy who said, hey, Max. Did you see that
thing in Slack where Iintentionally tried to poke the
bear
George B. Thomas (26:03):
with it? This episode? Did I do that this
episode?
Liz Moorhead (26:06):
You know, it's fine. It's fine.
George B. Thomas (26:09):
I should shoot out a little.
Liz Moorhead (26:11):
Yeah. No. I think, George, you mean, you're there's
all these different ways thatyou can collect it, but the
question is is,
Max Cohen (26:16):
like, are you actually doing anything with it,
and
Liz Moorhead (26:19):
are you using it to influence decisions that
Max Cohen (26:21):
you're making? Right? Because a lot of the time,
people aren't doing that.
Liz Moorhead (26:24):
Right? The other thing too, like, you know, I
think we have this HubSpot blogpost that we're meeting people
too. And, you know, one of
Max Cohen (26:32):
the examples that they give is a way to collect
feedback is obviously NetPromoter Score. Right? And I
think, like, you know, it's it'sone thing. Like, people
oftentimes, you know, whenpeople see, like,
Liz Moorhead (26:43):
oh, they gave us a, you know, a a a 10 or a nine
or whatever, they were like apromoter.
Max Cohen (26:48):
Right? What's the first thing we do with that? We
go, oh, let's let's see ifthey'll actually refer us to
somebody. And, like, that's whatthey use that data for. Right?
They'll go, oh, great. Thisperson said they're highly rec
like, likely to recommend us tosomebody. Let's go send them a
refer a friend email or some ortell them to go leave a review
or something like that. Right?We're just kind of, like,
(27:10):
redirecting this potential juicygood feedback that they can give
us into, like, hey.
Could you help help us sell tosomebody else? Or can you go,
like, tell the world thatmessage instead of just leaving
it in our Net Promoter Scoreinbox? Right? The thing that I
think we're missing there,right, is that if you just said,
hey. Saw you gave a greatreview.
(27:31):
I'd actually love to understandthat even more. Would you like
to just have a thirty minutechat with me? Right? Because
here's the thing. If if someonewas to get themselves into a
mindset of, like, oh, yeah.
I'd stake my reputation onrecommending this product
service business or whatever toother people, right, Chances are
(27:56):
they have some really goodreasons why they feel that way,
which would be good for you toknow, one. Right? And two, even
though they really, really likeyou, they probably have some
good ideas on what would make iteven better, what would
continue, or what would whatwould make me continue being a
(28:17):
promoter, and what would take mefrom a promoter to a detractor.
Right? They probably have somepretty strong opinions on that
stuff.
Right? So, like, one thing Iwould recommend is, like, an
easy low hanging fruit exampleof something you can do. If
you're a company that'scollecting Net Promoter Score
(28:37):
information on your customers,maybe do a little bit more than
just saying, hey. Can youintroduce me to a friend? Right?
How about you introduce me tosome ideas that you have in your
head? Right? So we can figureout what could we do to be even
better, what can we do to keepyou a promoter, and what should
we not do to one day turn youinto a detractor. Right? So you
(29:01):
can use all that information toguide the decisions that for,
you know, no uncertain termsmakes your customers promoters
or detractors or passive.
Right? So I think it's just likeanother way of just kind of
looking at this feedback you'realready getting, and it all
comes down to just how you'reusing it a little bit
(29:22):
differently, right, or how youcan use it a little bit
differently to, like, reallymake it true voice of the
customer instead of, oh, this issome feedback we got. Yep. We're
doing a good job. Right?
But it's there's so much morepast, yeah, we're doing a good
job. It's like, you know, whyare we doing a good job? How can
we do even better? What's gonnakeep us doing a good job? Right?
(29:43):
That kind of stuff. And I thinkthere's probably deeper
conversations sitting behindthose nine and ten net promoter
scores other than this is myfriend, Jeff, and he might also
like to buy what you have.Right? Or can
Liz Moorhead (29:56):
we get a testimonial thing?
Max Cohen (29:58):
Yeah. Can we get a testimonial? Yeah. I love it.
This.
Liz Moorhead (30:01):
So let's flip the script here a little bit. I
wanna talk a little
George B. Thomas (30:04):
bit the script. That's right.
Liz Moorhead (30:06):
There you got your rapping, and
George B. Thomas (30:08):
you did it. No. No. No. No.
You did it. There there'll bemore.
Max Cohen (30:12):
Oh, god. Oh,
Liz Moorhead (30:13):
no. Okay. Fantastic. That's not at all
terrifying.
George B. Thomas (30:18):
And it may or may not be in the voice and tone
of Eminem.
Liz Moorhead (30:23):
I find not dry heaving. I'm fine and not dry
heaving. Okay. So I want to flipflip flip the script here a
little bit and talk about wherevoice of customer work goes
wrong. And and and I wanna startthis part by saying where my
immediate my where my brainimmediately goes based on what
I'm hearing is, first of all,where does voice of customer
work go wrong?
By avoiding it, by not doing it.That sounds like a big way that
(30:46):
this kinda goes wrong right offthe bat. What do you think,
George?
George B. Thomas (30:50):
Obviously, what you said, like here's the
thing. It's almost like I wannalean into how earlier we said
building a product thatshouldn't exist based on not,
like, paying attention. Don'tjust gather feedback. Don't just
(31:11):
take polls. Don't just do sociallistening to do it.
Like, have clear goals. Like,what what are the goals of your
voice of customer program?Right? The other thing is I
think people will say, well,we've only got a hundred
(31:37):
customers, or we've only like,for for us, I could say, we only
have 15 customers per se. Like,let's just throw that out there
as a number.
What what is why should I doVOC? Like, it makes sense for a
big SaaS company that has, like,600,000 cuss no. No. No. No.
No. Because here's the thing.What they're trying to do or
(31:59):
what their brain might be goingafter is, like, voice of
customer equals quantity. That'sa falsality. Voice of customer
equals quality.
If I get 15 quality insightsfrom 15 conversations, I don't
need to have 500 more. Now wouldI have 500 more? Sure. If it was
(32:23):
formulated in a way that theoutcome was quality insights
versus a bunch of quantity junk.So, right, it's clear goals, and
then it's this idea of qualityversus quantity of what you're
trying to get.
And then we already we alreadyalluded to this one, but, like,
on the I don't wanna swear onthis podcast. It's not it's I
(32:46):
don't wanna get us canceled. Idon't wanna be that guy. That's
yeah. I have other people onthis podcast for that.
But, like, just You are welcome.Yes. Yes. Noah thanks you for
job security. It's like it'slike act on the data.
Act on the conversations. Like,make the pivots and transitions
(33:11):
on the insights that your brainnow has that you didn't
previously have. So I those arethree. I I don't know. You guys
might have more.
But that those are three thatimmediately come to my mind.
Liz Moorhead (33:23):
Yeah. So we
Max Cohen (33:24):
were saying what goes wrong? Well, I mean yeah. Like,
one, thinking that, oh, I haveto be a certain type of business
or I have to be a certain sizebusiness to do any sort of voice
of the customer work is insane.Like, if you have customers,
guess what? You can do voice ofthe customer stuff.
Like, it's all you need iscustomers if you have, like, any
(33:45):
they have voices. They theytalk. Right? And they say words,
and you can hear them and makedecisions based on those words.
Right?
So, like and we don't even haveto I think, like, when we start
calling it voice of the customerprogram, I think that scares a
lot of people away because theremight be some folks who are
saying, like, hey. I can barelypay my salespeople. I don't have
room for another program. Andthink of it as, like, voice of
the customer efforts. Right?
(34:06):
There are things you can do thatmake the voice of the customer
heard and get woven into yourdecision making process. Right?
But I think in terms of, like,what can go wrong. Right? You
know, if we do if you aredeveloping any kind of product
and when I say develop, I'm notmeaning, like, typing coding.
Like, I'm just saying buildingany sort of product, thinking of
the next iteration or how youcan make a product better, you
(34:29):
know, scope creep or whateverthe, you know, whatever the, the
the same term would be foranything that's not, like, you
know, building software. Tryingto do everything for everyone,
right, can be really tough.Because if you try to make a
product that does everything foreverybody, then all of a sudden,
it does nothing for nobody.Right? So being able to, like,
(34:52):
not only make sure you'rehearing those voices, but being
able to weigh those voices andbeing able to be comfortable
choosing what you are and arenot going to do based on those
voices.
Right? Because you might have areally, really loud customer
that really, really wantssomething. But, like, if that's
(35:13):
not something the majority ofthe customer voices you're
hearing, it might be somethingyou need to omit. Right? And you
have to make tough decisionsaround that.
Right? Sun set. Yeah. Sun set.
Liz Moorhead (35:25):
Rip timer, man. So rip to the goat. So I think
yeah. Like, it it
Max Cohen (35:31):
is one of those things, like, you know, whenever
we're building something andwe're talking about, like, a new
feature or something else theproducts can do, the best sort
of, like, voice of the customergut check that I get is, like,
when I hear from Connor or Ryansay, he'll say, has anybody
actually asked for this? Andsometimes it'll be like, yeah.
(35:55):
People ask for it all the time.Right? Or it'll be like, I know
people are gonna ask for thisbecause I know what causes
people to get really annoyed inHubSpot.
And then sometimes it's, No,nobody's asking for this, but I
know it would be really cool,and it's just something that I
don't think they know to ask foryet. Right? And, you know, you
start to get into these, like,weird places where it's, you
(36:18):
know, you gotta make a
Liz Moorhead (36:20):
lot of decisions around a lot of the data and you
gotta gut check your own sortof, beliefs on what
Max Cohen (36:25):
you think your product needs, you think your
service needs, this, that, andthe other thing. And it's always
really important to kinda, like,center yourself back down to,
like, has anybody actually askedfor this? Right? And and using
that in the decision makingprocess.
Liz Moorhead (36:38):
I see that a lot on the sales enablement content
side where, like, when I'mwhenever I'm doing, like, a,
brainstorm with them, it'll belike, are they actually asking
this question, or is this whatyou want them to be asking? But,
George, what were you gonna say?
George B. Thomas (36:51):
So it's it's interesting because, yes to
everything that we're talkingabout. But but what hit my brain
like a two by four on a, like,cold winter's day was the amount
of humans who are almost notwilling to follow their gut and
have the Henry Ford and SteveJobs moments. Because there is
(37:14):
the importance of voice ofcustomer and listening to the
customer, but sometimes theywanted a faster horse. Sometimes
they wanted a another m p threeplayer or cassette player. Like
and so sometimes when and I'mtalking specific to, you know,
products here, maybe evenservices.
(37:35):
But sometimes, you you have tostep out and take a chance to
transition to something thatmight be what they're looking
for before they're looking forit. Now here's what I think the
problem is that many peoplethink, well, we can't do that
because we might fail. Ladiesand gentlemen ladies and
gentlemen, here's the thing.It's not about failing. It's
(37:57):
about learning the lesson.
And by the way, the reason I'mbringing that up is because
that's one way you can learnlessons. But voice of customer,
it's lessons. It is literallyfree well, depending on if you
pay a team and all that becauseI don't wanna get hate mail. But
it is it is lessons delivered toyou from the Humans. But, also,
(38:20):
if you lean into what I amtalking about here with the
Henry Ford, the Steve Jobs, it'sjust lessons of life of doing
business, and we we can't beafraid of that.
We have to embrace both lines oflearning anyway. Uh-uh.
Liz Moorhead (38:35):
Like I said in the chat, RIP, Microsoft Zune,
because we needed another MPthree player
George B. Thomas (38:41):
from our MiniDisc player. Anybody
remember the MiniDisc player? Ibought one of those. Good lord.
Why did I do that?
But We
Liz Moorhead (38:48):
did a lot of things back then. Yeah. We did a
lot
George B. Thomas (38:50):
of things. I sure did.
Max Cohen (38:52):
Rip eye banana.
Liz Moorhead (38:53):
Moment of silence. Oh. Except not really. Yeah. No.
I love what you brought upthere, George, because I think
it's really important how tounderstand how we limit
ourselves. Because the other wayin which I could see this going
wrong is the reasons why wedon't engage this kind of work.
Right? Like, on the top level,in the superficial way, we might
(39:15):
say things like, oh, we don'thave time for another program.
We don't have time for this.
We don't have time for that. Arethose excuses because you're not
ready to hear from the voice ofthe customer? You're not ready
to hear what they have to say. Ithink it requires Thick skin.
Posture.
Max Cohen (39:29):
Well, it's it's sounds scarier when we call it a
program when it should just beyou can do these tiny little
efforts. It's just a change inthe way you use feedback,
though.
Liz Moorhead (39:39):
Right? Less of what I mean, Max. What I mean
more is, like, we will hidebehind excuses like, oh, it's
too difficult. It's toochallenging when the real spooky
scary reason is, well, I don'twanna open the door to feedback
from customers because what ifthey hate us? Or, like, there
are some organizational leaderswho are just straight up
resistant to change.
Like, it's it's the it's thenegative extreme of the Henry
(40:01):
Ford and Steve's job Steve Jobseffect. Our customers just do
not know what's best for them atall.
George B. Thomas (40:06):
Yeah. Yeah.
Liz Moorhead (40:07):
And so there's there's an openness to feedback
you have to have.
Max Cohen (40:11):
Yeah. True. It's
George B. Thomas (40:13):
and I don't know why my brain works this
way. I really don't, but it'salmost like there's two things
that are popping my brain. One,you have to have alligator skin
because you you just have torealize, like, it's you're gonna
hear things you don't wannahear, but it's out of that pain
that you're gonna be able tocreate something that is
absolutely amazing. And, youknow, not that alligators are
(40:35):
the most flexible things on theplanet, but that's the other
thing that came to my brain wasthe flexibility and the actual,
like, digital transformationbusiness gymnastics that this
voice of customer will enableyou if you have the thick
alligator skin to push throughthe fear of what we're talking
(40:57):
about and put together the miniprocesses that feed this to you.
Max Cohen (41:02):
And I think also too when it comes down to business,
right, I think survival of thefittest and natural selection
kinda comes into play. I thinkthe companies that have evolved
the ability to listen
George B. Thomas (41:21):
Yeah.
Max Cohen (41:21):
Listen listen to your customers, right, are the ones
that are gonna have a higherchance of survival than the ones
that don't. Because the onesthat don't keep going towards
the cliff. The ones that do turnaway from the cliff because they
heard that little voice of thecustomer saying, hey. Turn left.
(41:44):
Turn left away from the cliff.
Mhmm. Right? And they chose tolisten to that voice versus the
ones that were just like, we'rejust gonna do things the way
that we want. We're not gonnalisten to our customer. Oh, we
fell off the cliff, and we'redead, and we're gone.
Right? You know? I mean, sure.
George B. Thomas (41:58):
It's funny that they're
Max Cohen (42:00):
dead. But Sure. It's scary to listen to your
customers sometimes because youmight get your feelings hurt.
Well, hey, your feelings aregonna be much more hurt when no
one's buying anything from you,and you're laying everybody off.
Right?
So it's like, what's worse?
George B. Thomas (42:12):
Yeah. Bro, unemployment or being out of
business is much more painfulthan listening to your
customers.
Max Cohen (42:18):
Yeah. I'd much rather read an NPS survey that's about
a company and not me, myself, ahuman being Yeah. Right, than,
you know, lose my job or, like,fail at hitting our metrics or,
like, whatever. Right? Likeyeah.
Liz Moorhead (42:32):
So, George, I know this is a conversation that we
could literally run anothercouple hours on, and there's an
ex there are numerous resourcesthat I know you definitely wanna
share with our audience if theywanna start digging deeper into
this idea of voice of customer.Can you share those with us?
George B. Thomas (42:47):
Yeah. So, first of all, there is, Nate
Brown. I mentioned his nameearlier. You can search it. You
can literally look for thepodcast, episode we did.
I also did, like, I think, aFacebook live, going over that
podcast if you want the shortversion. There's also, and dang
(43:09):
it. If I don't have my shownotes up, but there's CX,
community which
Liz Moorhead (43:16):
CX accelerator?
George B. Thomas (43:17):
Yep. CX accelerator, which we'll put in
the show notes because that's aplace that you can, tune into
and kind of get moreinformation. And then, there's a
quite large I I'll call it apillar page. It's a blog, but
dang gone. Like, I was there fora hot minute.
(43:39):
HubSpot put it on and or createdit, and it has a bunch of tools
that you can dive into. It has abunch of questions that you
could be asking. They're reallysmart because they have a CTA
where you can download 61templates to do some of the
things that you're trying to dowhen it comes down to this voice
of customer. So, like,HubSpot's, 12, which, by the
(44:02):
way, sounds like it's not a abig number, but it's a big
number and the article's big.But it's 12 voice of customer
methodologies to generate a goldmine of customer feedback.
And so it goes deep into thechannels, goes deep into the
templates, goes deep into the,like, different softwares or
stuff that you could use. Sothat's a good resource. And and
(44:24):
I think those three places,other than just googling voice
of customer and doing your ownlittle journey on what that
means to you and yourorganization, are some of the
places I would send you first.Again, Nate Brown. Like, the
dude is, by the way, he's theinspiration for this episode and
(44:45):
for a future episode because Ican't wait, Liz, till we get to
the, conversation that we'regonna have in the future of
voice of employee.
Liz Moorhead (44:56):
I'm very excited
George B. Thomas (44:56):
about that. Pair with this voice of customer
conversation we're having today.
Liz Moorhead (45:01):
Outstanding. Well, George, land the plane. Take us
home. What do you want ourpeople to take away from this
conversation today? Because wecovered a lot of ground.
George B. Thomas (45:09):
Yeah. Start listening, start asking
questions, and start takingaction. Like, if if I were to
wrap up this thing, like, somany times we get stuck in the
weeds of the day in, day outdoing. I clock in. I get my
coffee.
(45:29):
I check my email. I design thisthing. I build this thing. I
watch this YouTube video whileI'm eating lunch. Then I check
my email, and we just easilyforget that there are hundreds,
if not thousands, if notmillions of humans wanting to
(45:51):
feel like they belong, wantingto feel like they're being
heard, wanting to feel likethey're being seen, and we're
just letting it all slip throughthe cracks.
And, literally, you are onevoice of customer piece of
information to the next greatidea that may explode your brand
or business to a place that younever thought it could achieve.
(46:14):
Max, it looks like you havesomething to say.
Max Cohen (46:17):
I didn't know if you I was waiting because I didn't
know if you were gonna, like,end it on that.
George B. Thomas (46:21):
No. No. Yeah.
Liz Moorhead (46:22):
I mean I have something special.
George B. Thomas (46:23):
I have something special, which, by the
way, you didn't like Eminem whenI said that, so I I I have I
might have a different specialthing for you. But next, what
are your what are your thoughts?
Max Cohen (46:34):
What are you thinking? Yeah. I mean, I think
the the thing much like many ofthe topics that are more
esoteric that we talk about onthis show, I think the big thing
would be is, like, don'toverthink it. Right? Everyone
can do this.
All you have to do is think alittle bit differently about
where you're applying the feetwhen sorry. When you're applying
(46:56):
the feedback that you'regetting. Right? Are you being
proactive with it? And juststart to ask yourself.
There could be millions of waysto do it, but just start to ask
ask yourself, what's thesimplest way that we could give
our customers a voice at thetable when we're making big
decisions that impact them? Andhow we can we take that into
account before we make thedecision. Every business can do
(47:18):
that in some way, shape, orform. Right? It doesn't have to
be a again, it doesn't have tobe a program.
It doesn't have to be anadvisory board. It doesn't have
to be something that iscompletely unique to specific
industries. Everybody has peoplethat give them money for
something, so you havecustomers. Those customers, for
(47:41):
the most part, can communicatewith you somehow. How do you
take that voice and apply it todecisions you're making that
have an impact on them beforethe decision is made?
K? You go go figure it out.Alright? It's not rocket
science. That's what I'm gonnasay.
Liz Moorhead (47:59):
Love
George B. Thomas (47:59):
it. So now let's play a game. Max, get your
hand close to the buzzer. Liz,get your hand close to the
buzzer. Because I regeneratedthis into another voice, and I'm
gonna read the first line.
And if the the person that tellsme what voice I regenerated this
(48:21):
in before I do the rest of therap song on voice of customer,
I'm I will buy them a, breakfastburrito at Dunkin' Donuts at in
no. Yes.
Max Cohen (48:35):
No. I've that in love.
Liz Moorhead (48:37):
I thought they're nice, by the way. Burrito.
George B. Thomas (48:39):
Yeah. Breakfast burrito at Dunkin'
Donuts at inbound. Okay. So Sothis
Max Cohen (48:44):
is a rapper's voice that
George B. Thomas (48:45):
you need to aim around today? This is a rap
song, that I'm going to rapslash read through. But I'm
gonna give you the first line.You're gonna hit the buzzer, and
you're gonna tell me who therapper is because it's not
Eminem because Liz had avisceral response to, like
Liz Moorhead (49:00):
I actually really like Eminem. I was just more
like, oh god. Is he gonnapretend to be Eminem? It was
more of a like
George B. Thomas (49:05):
a Yo. I'm not the goat. I can't rap like him.
So no way. So ready?
Here it goes. Now this is astory all about how
Liz Moorhead (49:14):
Fresh Prince.
Max Cohen (49:15):
I mean,
George B. Thomas (49:16):
Max, how did you get like, you you got
torched, bro. Alright. So hereit is.
Max Cohen (49:21):
I thought you were gonna play audio.
George B. Thomas (49:23):
No. No. No. No. It's not that
Liz Moorhead (49:25):
we don't
Max Cohen (49:25):
have that
Liz Moorhead (49:26):
kind of budget. I get the breakfast burrito of
destiny. You are a loser.
George B. Thomas (49:29):
We we don't have that kind of budget. But
so, so here we go. Now this is astory all about how your
feedback's the crown that werock right now. From five star
reviews to what's on your mind,we ain't just chilling. We're
pressing rewind.
We flip the script when thingsgo wrong. Customer service
smooth like a nineties song. Noassumptions here. Now we dig and
(49:51):
explore. Peep in every detail,then you give you and then we
give you more.
Now that's the first verse. ButI gotta I gotta do the chorus,
and I gotta share the bridgebecause they're hilarious. By
the way, there's other verses.I'm not gonna do them all. But
the chorus goes, so tell me howyou feel.
Don't hold it in. We're here tovibe with you. Let the convo
(50:12):
begin. We ask the rightquestions. No guessing the deal.
Then take action. Take action.Keeping it real. Alright? So I
had to get the take action piecein.
Now the bridge is it's a backand forth it's it's a back and
forth like a ping pong game. Youspeak, we groove, keep shaking
the frame. No canned response.We straight up flow. Innovation
(50:38):
together let the energy grow.
Okay, hub heroes. We've reachedthe end of another episode. Will
Lord Lack continue to loom overthe community, or will we be
able to defeat him in the nextepisode of the Hub Heroes
podcast? Make sure you tune inand find out in the next
(51:00):
episode. Make sure you head overto the hubheroes.com to get the
latest episodes and become partof the league of heroes.
FYI, if you're part of theleague of heroes, you'll get the
show notes right in your inbox,and they come with some hidden
power up potential as well. Makesure you share this podcast with
a friend. Leave a review if youlike what you're listening to,
(51:22):
and use the hashtag, hashtag hubeuros podcast on any of the
socials, and let us know whatstrategy conversation you'd like
to listen into next. Until nexttime, when we meet and combine
our forces, remember to be ahappy, helpful, humble human,
and, of course, always belooking for a way to be
someone's hero.
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