This webinar ran as part of Grandview’s Product Management View (PMV) webinar series. It is available on-demand here.

Lynne VanArsdale was a good friend of my wife and mine back when we worked together on the Denver chapter of Product Development and Management Association (PDMA). She drove up from Colorado Springs just to support the chapter. She is a great product person; extremely busy. She's an example of that old adage about "If you want something done ask a busy person."

In this webinar, Lynne discusses an opportunity to make order out of chaos. She addresses five ways to reduce product risk through voice of the customer (VoC) initiatives. They are:

1. Focus on value - high fidelity to the customer's value system
2. Remove political agendas
3. Dispel myths by testing
4. Improve customer relationships
5. Set the stage for continuous customer feedback

VoC initiatives enable a corporate cultural effect because they involve interdisciplinary teams. As they work on these initiatives, they relate with the customer on a personal level. Those involved are able to make innovative product and cultural changes that bring value back to the customer and the company itself.

VoC initiatives help provide insight into the decision making process early on in the innovation process, where most of the financial commitments are being made. This means they have a better potential impact than initiatives conducted later in the innovation process.

While looking for a good process diagram, Lynne states that she had a difficult time finding one that shows Opportunity Analysis, and suggests that this is a underdeveloped best practice. She uses VoC very heavily in the Opportunity Analysis stage. She looks at the customer experience, to determine what the best opportunities to pursue are. This is a critical step because there are so many options out there today. It's important to narrow down the choice of opportunities early to get the best bang for the buck.

"Voice of the Customer is not about asking the customer what they want in a product. It's about gaining a deep appreciation for the customer's experience."

Lynne talks about the need to involve stakeholders, and how this normally means higher levels of change and commitment from the stakeholders. Today stakeholders are looking for additional ways of becoming even more involved in the actual decision-making processes of the product. Surveys and older VoC tools don't support the level of involvement that today's stakeholders want. This isn't limited to just the front-end of ideation, but today involvement means every decision point throughout the innovation process.

The diagram below illustrates a VoC Process that goes through a phase of divergent and convergent thinking which helps stakeholders feel like they're not being manipulated and drawn down a primrose path, but rather you, as the product management team, really value the stakeholder's views. I think the diagram also puts things in context and helps the product management team realize there's more to market insight than following what is being said on Twitter and taking surveys.