I’ve been riding the VOC train and harping on the importance of Voice-of-Customer work. It is essential to my growth strategies and gives manufacturers insights they never imagined.
Most manufacturers I work with already have access to some of the best market research they could ever buy. It is sitting in their CRM, their inboxes, their salespeople’s heads and, most importantly, in the experiences of the customers who have already chosen to do business with them. Yet very few companies systematically tap into that information before deciding what to say, who to target or where to spend their marketing dollars.
That is one reason I believe Voice-of-Customer interviews are one of the most underused growth tools available to manufacturers.
I am not talking about sending out a customer satisfaction survey or asking someone to rate your company from one to 10. I am talking about having a neutral third-party have actual conversations with customers to understand why they bought, what they were trying to accomplish, what alternatives they considered, what nearly prevented them from buying, what has kept them coming back, what you could offer that you don’t — basically, an external SWOT analysis.
When you approach those conversations as research rather than simply customer service, the information you uncover can influence virtually every part of your sales and growth strategy.
Your customers may understand your value better than you do.
Manufacturers are usually very good at explaining what they make. They know their equipment, materials, tolerances, certifications, processes and capabilities inside and out. The problem is that none of those things necessarily explain why a customer decided to buy from them instead of someone else.
I have seen manufacturers describe themselves with the same handful of words over and over again: quality, service, on-time delivery, experienced people, competitive pricing and state-of-the-art equipment. There is nothing wrong with any of those things, but they are not particularly differentiating because virtually every competitor is saying the same thing.
The more interesting question is what those words mean to the customer.
A machine shop might believe customers choose it because of its five-axis capabilities, but a customer might explain that the real reason they stayed was because the shop’s engineers helped solve problems before they reached production. Another customer might say that what matters most is knowing someone will call if there is going to be a delay rather than discovering the problem when the shipment does not arrive.
Those are two very different value propositions, and neither one may appear anywhere on the company’s website. That is the power of VOC research. It allows you to stop assuming you know why customers buy and start listening to the people who actually made the decision.
Ask questions that uncover the buying decision
The quality of your VOC research is largely determined by the questions you ask. If you ask customers whether they are satisfied, most will tell you they are. If you ask whether they would recommend you, you may get a useful metric, but you still may not understand what actually drives the buying decision.
I want to know what was happening in the customer’s business when they began looking for a solution and have created a series of questions that accomplish exactly that. I want to know what happened after the sale.
Those questions take the conversation beyond whether someone is “happy” with your company. They begin to uncover the actual customer journey, and that is information your sales and marketing teams can use.
Listen for the language your customers use
One of the most valuable things you can get from a VOC interview is not just what customers say, but how they say it.
Manufacturers tend to describe their businesses using technical and operational language because that is how they think about what they do. Customers may be thinking about something entirely different. They may be worried about a production line going down, a missed customer deadline, excessive scrap, inconsistent parts, a supplier who does not communicate or an engineering team that is already stretched too thin.
Your company may be selling machining; your customer may be buying peace of mind. That distinction can completely change the way you position the business.
When you hear the same customer language repeatedly, you have something much more valuable than a marketing brainstorm. You have evidence. You can use those words to improve sales discovery questions, proposals, case studies, website copy, LinkedIn content, email nurture and conversations with prospects.
You are no longer trying to come up with a clever way to explain why someone should buy from you. You are using the language of people who already did.
VOC can improve your marketing without increasing your budget
This is where VOC research becomes particularly interesting to me because it connects directly to how I approach marketing strategy.
I am not a fan of creating marketing activity simply because someone decided a company needs more marketing. Before adding another channel, another campaign or another advertising budget, I want to understand what we are trying to accomplish and what the market is actually telling us.
Customer interviews can provide that insight.
If customers repeatedly tell you that they chose you because you were willing to take on a difficult repeat job that other suppliers did not want, that is useful positioning information. If they consistently talk about how responsive your engineering team is, that may deserve much more prominence in your messaging. If they tell you that they struggled to understand what you actually do before talking with a salesperson, you may have a website problem that has nothing to do with traffic.
And if your customers keep asking questions that your website never answers, you have just been handed a content strategy.
That is one reason VOC can also support SEO, GEO and AEO. The questions customers ask in real conversations are often the same questions prospects type into Google or ask AI tools before they ever contact a supplier. When you understand those questions, you can create content that answers them because you know they matter, rather than publishing another generic article because somebody told you that you need a blog.
Talk to customers who are not completely happy
There is another side of VOC research that can be uncomfortable, but it may be some of the most valuable information you collect.
Talk to the customers who have complained. Talk to the customers who had a problem with an order. Talk to the customers who almost left. Talk to the customers who reduced their purchases. If you have recently lost an important customer and the relationship is appropriate for a conversation, find out why. I pair this with an annual net promoter score survey and reach out to everyone who scores 7 or below to learn from and fix the problem. Anyone with an 8 or above, I ask for a 5-star Google review. This helps with SEO.
Your happiest customers can tell you what you are doing right. Your unhappy customers can often tell you where your processes are breaking down. That distinction is important because not every customer problem is a marketing problem.
If customers repeatedly tell you that they have difficulty getting order updates, the answer may not be a new email campaign. You may have a communication process that needs to be fixed. If customers say sales promised something operations could not deliver, that is not a website problem. It is a sales and operations alignment problem.
This is where my Lean Six Sigma background comes into play. I do not want to collect customer comments simply to create better marketing copy. I want to understand what those comments are telling us about the entire customer experience and the processes behind it.
Sometimes the best marketing decision you can make is to fix something inside the business before you spend another dollar trying to attract someone new.
You do not need hundreds of interviews to find patterns
You also do not need a massive research budget to get started. For a small or midsize manufacturer, I would rather see 3 to 10 thoughtful customer interviews than hundreds of survey responses that tell you very little about why people buy.
Choose customers strategically. Include some of your best customers, but do not limit the research to them. Talk to newer customers, long-term customers, customers who buy a lot and customers who buy less. unhappy customers, prospects. If you can, include different industries, applications or customer types so you can see whether the reasons for buying change from one segment to another.
Then look for patterns rather than individual comments.
One customer saying something interesting is an anecdote. When multiple customers independently describe the same problem, buying trigger or reason for staying with you, you are starting to uncover something much more significant.
That is research.
And it can be remarkably inexpensive compared with the cost of launching a campaign based on an assumption that turns out to be wrong.
Take what you learn back into sales
The biggest mistake you can make with VOC research is to conduct the interviews, create a nice report and then put it in a folder where nobody looks at it again.
The purpose of the research is to change something.
Take what you learn and put it in the hands of your sales team. If customers are consistently describing a problem that your salespeople are not asking about, change the discovery process. If customers are using language that resonates much more strongly than your current positioning, incorporate it into your proposals and presentations.
Look at your website and ask whether it reflects what customers actually value. Look at your nurture campaigns and determine whether they address the concerns prospects have during the buying process. Look at your case studies and see whether they demonstrate the outcomes customers care about rather than simply listing what you did.
Then take the research back to operations.
If customers are telling you that a particular part of the experience is frustrating, investigate why. If several customers are praising a process that you never considered a competitive advantage, figure out whether you can replicate it across the business.
That is when VOC moves from marketing research into growth strategy.
Your next lead may be hiding inside your existing customer base
Manufacturers are constantly being told they need more leads. More website traffic. More LinkedIn activity. More advertising. More tradeshows. More outbound.
Sometimes, they do.
But I would argue that before you spend more money trying to get strangers to notice you, you should understand why the people who already know you decided to buy.
Your customers can tell you what problem you actually solve, what differentiates you, what almost cost you the sale, what keeps them loyal and where you may have opportunities to sell more. They can also show you where your sales process, marketing message and customer experience are out of alignment.
And you do not have to spend money on advertising to have those conversations.
That is why I consider Voice-of-Customer research much more than a marketing tactic. It is a way to replace assumptions with evidence and connect what your customers are telling you to the decisions you make about sales, marketing, operations and growth.
The manufacturers that do this well are not simply better at marketing themselves; they understand their customers better. And when you understand why customers buy, you have a much better chance of finding more customers who look like them. That’s where the marketing begins.