[Preview] Beyond Voice of Customer: Reading the Signals Customers Send Without Saying a Word

Speaker A: Foreign.

Speaker B: Hi, it's Mark Graben. Welcome to the Kinexus Continuous Improvement Podcast. Today we are doing a quick preview of the next webinar in our Continuous Improvement Webinar series. It's going to be presented live Thursday, June 18th, 1:00 Eastern. And it's titled beyond the Voice of Customer How Richer Customer Signals Can Improve Continuous Improvement. So you can register for that by going to kinexus.comwebinars. you can also look for uh, a direct registration link in the podcast show notes. And if you're listening to this, after June 18th, the recording will be available here in the podcast feed and on our YouTube channel. So again we encourage you to register, check it out, join us live, participate in the Q and A. Or if you're checking out the recording, I think you'll find a lot to learn there as well. Uh, we are joined today a quick preview, uh, with our two presenters for the webinar. They are Annette Barenzmeier and Volker Probst. They're both uh, managing partners with their firm, Resonance Growth Partners. Uh, Volker and Annette, how are you today?

Speaker A: Fantastic. Thanks for having us, Marc.

Speaker C: We're great. Yeah.

Speaker B: Well, thank you for doing the preview. Thank you in advance for doing the webinar. Um, I'll introduce you. I'll do the formal introduction during the webinar but maybe we can be a little bit less formal here. Uh, Annette, we'll start with you. You know, tell us about your, yourself and uh, you know, your background and your career.

Speaker A: Sure thing. I consider myself a customer experience leader. I've been working in the CX industry for more than a decade now, both on the software as a service platform side and also with companies building out their global customer experience programs and then as a consultant helping to shape those programs and help different companies better listen to their customers.

Speaker B: And you're joining us from Germany?

Speaker A: I am, um, I am in Germany right now. Usually based in California in the Bay Area, but right now in Germany. Yeah.

Speaker B: And uh, thank you Volker. Volker Probst, our other co presenter. If you could tell us about yourself as well.

Speaker C: Sure thing, Mark. My name is Volker Probst. I'm also currently based in California but currently living in uh, or currently visiting Germany as well coincidentally. And um, I uh, have spent most of my career in continuous improvement as a consultant, uh, in healthcare as really transforming healthcare organizations towards the continuous improvement frameworks. And uh, started about 10 years ago trying to really understand better the interactions of customer experience and continuous improvement. And uh, we've built that framework of signals and action on the other side and engagement on the other side in order to really transform, um, businesses and make decisions easier to implement for our partners and for our customers.

Speaker B: Oh, thanks, Volker. Um, so as a quick preview of the webinar, again, it's titled beyond the Voice of How Richer Customer Signals Can Improve, Continuous Improvement. Let me ask you this. You know, I think the phrase voice of the customer is used a lot in the context of Lean and Six Sigma and other methodologies. What do you mean by customer signals? Maybe if you'd just give us, ah, a quick overview. I know you're going to tell us more in the webinar. Are there customer signals that might come in a different way?

Speaker A: Yeah, I can speak to that a little bit. Um, when you hear voice of customer. Right. Even just the word voice, um, makes it sound like we need customers to do something, speak to us, write an email, take a survey, something like that. And so the difference between that and signals really is that signals is broader. You can send a signal and your customers can send a signal without lifting a finger, without responding to a survey. And that's where we really want to take a closer look and see what are those unsolicited signals? Um, and how can technology today enable us to really understand our customers without bugging them, without waiting for them to, to be maybe annoyed, upset enough to send us an email or take a survey? Where can we look at behaviors and um, operational indicators to better understand them and decide what to improve for them?

Speaker B: So is it fair to say sometimes there's a gap between what customers say and what customers do?

Speaker A: I'm sure there is. Right. Farka, what do you think?

Speaker C: Yeah, because I think, um, I can share. A quick story is when my wife was in the hospital and um, was uh, pregnant with our twins many, many years ago, every day a nurse would come in and would ask her to fill out a survey and give her 10 points because that's how she was incentivized. And so there was some bias in terms of, uh, you know, uh, the signals which were coming in for, for that experience. And I think that that is underlying. You know, you don't, uh, and I think that's what we are trying to break through and saying there's other behaviors, as Annette said, who indicate, is that how the experience really was and then subsequently what organizations should focus on and what they should decide on to invest into in order to improve that experience.

Speaker B: Annette, is there anything else you would add before we wrap up preview?

Speaker A: Join us for the webinar. And please come with many, many questions. We're looking forward to the webinar and to the conversation afterwards.

Speaker B: Yes, well, so am I, and I know everybody who has registered is looking forward to it. If you haven't registered yet, please do kynexus.comwebinars or look for a link in the show notes. Again, the, uh, presentation, I think there'll be something there for people in other, uh, all sorts of industries, um, not just manufacturing companies, service businesses. And as Volker touched on here, healthcare. Voice of the patient and, uh, is a very important thing for us to think about as well. So, uh, beyond the voice of customer, how richer customer signals can improve, continuous improvement. Volker Probst and Annette Barenzmeier, thank you so much for doing the preview today.

Speaker A: Thank you.

Speaker C: Thank you.

Speaker A: M.