Research
Consulting
Dynamic
Scorecard
Executive Alignment
Strategic
Management
Voice of Customer
Education
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 Building
a Voice of the Customer/Employee Capability
While some organizations prefer to contract out the various parts of a
customer or employee measurement system, others prefer to manage some or all
of the measurement functions internally. PMA is prepared to help clients
determine how much, if any, of the research and measurement capability to
outsource, and to help the client build the capability it desires to
maintain. The following text applies equally to building a Voice of the
Employee or a combined VOC/VOE capability.
Why Does It Matter?
Creating and maintaining an in-house capability to conduct or manage
sophisticated research and monitoring activities allows for a greater degree
of control over results and flexibility. It also alleviates a need to become
wedded to a particular vendor's methodologies, approach or philosophy.
How We Work
We are completely flexible as to how we work with clients to develop
their in-house capabilities. For a national credit rating service, for
example, we delivered five-days of customer research training to fifteen of
their in-house professionals. This enabled them to move ahead on their own.
In another case, we worked with a senior level managerial task force at a
large property and casualty insurance company to benchmark best practices at
leading companies, and to design a detailed measurement systems architecture
and implementation plan. A major business publishing house engaged us to not
only work with their high level task force, but to demonstrate research
methods and best practices by conducting a full cycle of research
in partnership with them.
Whatever our client's preferences about how we work with them, we first
learn as much as we can about their business, their situation and their
needs. Then we review their existing data and data collection
methods, if any, so that we can build on what is already in place. Finally,
we assess their processes for disseminating and using data, and their
improvement systems and methodologies. We firmly believe that helping
clients to use the information they are to collect is far more important
than simply teaching them how to collect data.
We also typically teach or demonstrate our own proprietary methods such
as expectations mining®, which is a highly specialized qualitative method
used to gain a deep understanding of customers' and employees requirements, as well as
highly useful but little known techniques as Zone of Tolerance exhibits. The
combination of our advanced methods and best practice tours and studies
assures clients of developing research processes that are both
practical and leading-edge.
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