1. How Voice of the Customer Via
Employees Can Harness
Frontline Insights
A Complimentary Webinar from Aurora WDC
12:00 Noon Eastern /// Wednesday 19 February 2014
~ featuring ~
Bill Hoffman
The Intelligence Collaborative
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Steve Wallin
Michel Bernaiche
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2. Bill Hoffman
Steve Wallin
Bill Hoffman is Managing Partner and Co-Founder of Frontline Insights. Most recently he served as
Senior Vice President of Customer Insight for Best Buy where he created and led the Consumer
Insights Unit (CIU) responsible for the Customer Analytics, Customer & Consumer
Research, Competitive Strategy/Intelligence, Market Analytics, and VOCE (Voice of the Customer
through the Employee) teams. Prior to Best Buy, he was a Senior Expert in McKinsey & Company’s
Strategy Practice. Prior, Hoffman was a Partner at The Gallup Organization and also served in SVP
Strategy roles for Bank of America. Hoffman began his career at the Central Intelligence Agency where
he earned the Balkans service medal & two exceptional performance awards; he also served in the
United States Navy ending his tenure as a Lieutenant (Intel). He was selected for the Minneapolis/St.
Paul "40 Under Forty" award in 2011.
Email: Bill@FrontlineInsights.com
Steve Wallin is Managing Partner and Co-Founder of Frontline Insights. His 20-year career has
included leadership roles in professional services, training, customer care, operations, and consumer
insights. Prior to Frontline Insights Wallin spent 8 years at Best Buy where he created and launched
many unique programs. He led the national launch of Geek Squad’s first online customer technical
support, now called Geek Squad Tech Support. In 2010, he joined Hoffman in CIU as his right hand
where he led development of and launched Best Buy's first formal VOC (Voice Of Customer)
department and created the Voice Of the Customer through the Employee (VOCE) program as Vice
President of Consumer Insights Strategy & Execution (ISE). VOCE was selected as a Harvard Business
Review/McKinsey & Company M-Prize winner for Management Innovation. Email:
Steve@FrontlineInsights.com
The Intelligence Collaborative is the online learning and networking
community powered by Aurora WDC, our clients, partners and other friends
and dedicated to exploring how to apply intelligence methods to solve realworld business problems.
Apply for a free 30-day trial membership at http://IntelCollab.com or learn
more about Aurora at http://AuroraWDC.com – see you next time!
The Intelligence Collaborative
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3. Questions, Commentary & Content
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Use the Questions pane on your
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will be answered in the second half of the
hour.
You are welcome to tweet any comments on
Twitter where we are monitoring the
hashtag #IntelCollab or eavesdrop via
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Slides will be available after the webinar for
embedding and sharing via
http://slideshare.net/IntelCollab
To view the recording and download the PPT
file, please register for a trial membership at
http://IntelCollab.com.
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4. Agenda
► Frontline Insights Philosophy
► Insights Radar – Listening to Employees
► Why it Matters
► People Process & Technology
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5. Why we exist on the planet
Impact
Technical model
Management system
The success rates of organizations
that had…
53
1.5 x
Increase process efficiency to
maximize change impact
Adjust organizational
design, KPIs, targets to support the
change
32
Capabilities
Limited
frontline
ownership
Strong
frontline
ownership
5
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Coach local managers, teach
front-line operators
Mindset and behaviors
Emphasize leadership behavior, role
modeling, reinforcement mechanisms
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6. What we believe
Insights Units should be this . . .
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Not this . . .
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7. Our POV…avoid this!!!
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8. The 7 Deadly Sins of VOE Programs
7. The employees are just using the forum to complain
6. We aren’t getting any innovative ideas
5. Employees are using your program instead of mine!
4. Your voice is important (wink, wink)
3. If you build it – they will come
2. The Marble Palace
1. Share this, not that
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9. Are you REALLY listening???
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10. Surveys ≠ Listening
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11. The Radar Should Always Be On
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12. HBR/MCKINSEY M-PRIZE WINNER at Best Buy
http://www.managementexchange.com/story/my-customer-one-voice
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13. Process – How Radar Works
Employees listen to
customers and observe
behavior
Leadership and business
teams can pose
questions to employees
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Provide an easy and fast
method for sharing
insights
Communicate insights to
relevant corporate teams
AND front line leaders
Process the input to
determine key themes
Provide a summary of
what you heard
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3

14. It’s More Than Just Technology
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15. Insights Radar - Why
A great customer experience starts with a great employee experience. To connect with customers in
a relevant, meaningful way, you must first connect with your employees.
Highly engaged employees are vested in the workplace experience and have skin in the game to be
successful, whereas customers in many cases have choices to vote with their wallet elsewhere. The VoE
carries significant weight towards long-term success.
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16. Insights Radar - Why
It’s all about employee engagement…
Listening = Respect.
Employees want to be
heard – it tells them that
what they have to say is
worth the time it takes to
listen and it tell them that
they matter.
Purpose. When employees
contribute to something that
drives value to an
organization, they feel
enriched for having
contributed to the company.
Performance. According to
Gallup, engaged employees
simply perform better than
unengaged employees.
Solutions. Engaged
employees are more likely
to find solutions to potential
customer problems and
even more powerful, they
will share those solutions.
“Outstanding leaders go out of their way to boost the self-esteem of their personnel. If
people believe in themselves, it's amazing what they can accomplish.” - Sam Walton
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17. Insights Radar - Why
A robust VoE capability is another tool to add to insights arsenal that enhances traditional research
methodologies and provides a 360 degree lens across customer experience.
Analytics
Employee
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Competitive
Intelligence
Research
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18. Insights Radar – How
The elements that encompass the building of a VoE center around People, Process, and
Technology. People are the most important asset and sit at the intersection of technology and
process. They are the pulse and they define necessary requirements within an often iterative
process.
Process
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People
Technology
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19. Technology – The Radar Platform
The fundamental philosophy around technology is that it must be as simple as possible for the
end-user and free up time so that it may be allocated towards driving action in service of improving
the customer and employee experience.
Insights
Insights
Insights
Platform
Software
Reporting
Survey
Simple gathering
mechanism for insights
Text analytics separates
signal from noise and
organizes data
Structure to gather input
and visualize results
Provides additional method
to gather insights and
assess capability
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20. BALANCE THE SHORT AND LONG TERM VIEW
Establishing a sustainable and meaningful VoE program requires
patience, diligence, and commitment , and as with most worthwhile things, it takes time.
You will likely face the three C’s…
Time
“We already knew that”
“Volume is too low”
“That’s only one location –
it’s an anomaly”
Initially people may roll
their eyes and mention how
they have seen this
before, or employees only
complain, they have bad
ideas.
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Once you’ve gathered and
analyzed employee
inputs, you may face
criticism when attempting
to drive action.
If you continue to
listen, take action, and
communicate, you will
eventually reach the third
“C” and see a culture
change.
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21. Insights Radar Principles
▪
Philosophy: Listening to insights your employees observe about your customers is
either important, or it isn’t
▪
Executive Leadership: Senior support of employee insight is critical
▪
Capability: Providing insights must be easy and fast for your employees
▪
Expectation: Employee insights will not provide THE answer. They will enlighten your
customer’s perspective AND your employees’ experience.
▪
Empowerment: Do not control what insight employees provide, everything is a clue
▪
Long View: Patience is critical. Shifting culture to enable, empower, and expect
employees to provide insights takes time.
▪
Strategic Communications: Share the fact insights are received, listened to, and
acted upon. Ensure employees know their insight is valued, relevant, used.
▪
Reinforcement: Recognize employees for contributions & leaders who are clearly
listening to their employees
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22. Thank you!
Now how about a little Q&A?
Bill Hoffman
Email: Bill@FrontlineInsights.com
Steve Wallin
Email: Steve@FrontlineInsights.com
The Intelligence Collaborative is the online learning and networking
community powered by Aurora WDC, our clients, partners and other friends
and dedicated to exploring how to apply intelligence methods to solve realworld business problems.
Apply for a free 30-day trial membership at http://IntelCollab.com or learn
more about Aurora at http://AuroraWDC.com – see you next time!
The Intelligence Collaborative
http://IntelCollab.com #IntelCollab
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