Voice of the Customer (VOC) =

• The needs and wants of your customers
• The relative importance of features and benefits associated with your product
• The expectations and promises that are both fulfilled and unfulfilled by your product or service
• What your customers need for increased satisfaction.

Voice of the Customer (VOC) is a term that describes your customer’s feedback about their experiences with and expectations for your products or services.  Meetings happen, questions asked, feedback given. 

Listening to and gathering customers' comments is truly where and when the rubber meets the road.  Not giving it the attention it deserves, or brushing it aside opens one to exceptional risk of failure in the design of products.  Not listening to customer feedback means designers work and develop products in a  vacuum and open future business revenue opportunity to risk if they are developing products that customers don't even want.

So...we all listen, but what happens to all those comments?  Are any actions driven?  Can they be tracked and considered in the design process?

To hep answer that, have you checked out the Traceable Requirements Management (TRM) offering from ENOVIA?

I know that what comes next may sound like some marketing shpeel, but an ENOVIA user approached me today looking for more info as he truly believes it to be an exceptionally important aspect of the design process.  I couldn't agree more and thought, "hey, I better share the message on the blog! "

TRM enables organizations to improve their overall global requirement management process by capturing the “voice of the customer” and translating it into user requirements that define new products.  This feature is available on premise and on cloud.

If you are interested in learning more and pulling the VOC into your design process earlier to ensure future success (and who doesn't want that?), be sure to check out some high level information at these two entries - HERE and HERE.

I've also attached a reference TRM .pdf document for your reading. Check it out!

If you are already using TRM, how has it worked for you?  What do you like or what would you like to see improved.  Would love to read your feedback and comments.  Like the NSA, we're listening!  ;-)

MjH