It is easy for us to forget that the most accurate research and data of all is direct customer feedback. It may be sometimes unpalatable and challenging but it needs to be sought out and issues addressed if a business is to succeed.

cama™ is a process developed by two partners of nem Australasia, Scott Nelson and Derek Stott. The acronym stands for Competitive Advantage, Market Attractiveness. There are two elements of the process. The first is an assessment by the client, guided by a facilitator, of its competitive position in its markets and the attractiveness of each market. This involves a ranking and quantification of the factors that influence their customers decision making in selecting a supplier and quantification of their competitive position for each element. The second element involves interviews with customers in each market basically to test the views of the client.

I have recently completed a cama™ review for a client with a diverse mix of business and markets. The review has reinforced for me the power of hearing the voice of the customer. Each one of the 20 interviews conducted revealed a “golden nugget” that will be invaluable in improving the business. Some issues raised were minor and easily fixed but had grown out of proportion because they were unknown to the client. Despite having participated in similar processes previously, it was a real wake-up call of the need to calibrate internal views with the realities of customer feedback. After all, customer perception is your reality.

There are some important take outs from the work

1. The interviews must be carried out by a third party. Customers will not usually open up directly with a supplier.

2. The internal evaluation is essential. Much of the value comes from a comparison of the results from the client’s view and that of customers. There are invariably differences that need to be understood.

3. The interviews need to be carefully managed to achieve maximum benefit. Hard measures are required from the customer to enable good analysis. However, interviews also need to flow so that customer “hot spots” are revealed.

4. It is important that the interview concludes with an open-ended question, “Is there anything that we haven’t talked about that would help my client’s business?” This often uncovers burning issues that need to be dealt with.

A final unsurprising observation is that customers really appreciate the fact that their opinions are being sought. It demonstrates care and concern for the customer. And there is quite possibly no better time than now, to do this for the majority of businesses!

It takes real courage to face the realities of the feedback and, often, criticism of the customer. Some of the feedback will not ring true but it all must be faced as being factual and addressed. Customer perception is reality as it determines where they spend their dollar.

Authors: John McKinstry, Director & Bernie Bicknell, Partner nem Australasia

This article is based on research and opinion available in the public domain.