VOC, UX, CX, and BX: The path to faster horses
Henry Ford allegedly claimed that “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” The attribution has largely been debunked, with little proof that he actually uttered these words (save the inspirational posters that have found a niche home on Pinterest). Nevertheless, the pithy phrase whinnies across the corporate world. Its used to express hesitations about over-indexing consumer input into solutions and losing sight of the art of the possible. And those hesitations are right. Sort of.
Asking and acting on what customers want is not going to keep you ahead of the game; but asking what they want and acting on the deeper need and persistent desire revealed, will (shout out jobs to be done). Consumers might want a faster horse, but they need speed and more for their time and effort. They desire to travel efficiently and a car is the better tool for that job.
A simple exercise, that I came across during an MIT D-Lab Inclusive Innovation course, can prove out the value of insights that can only be found in the space between the on-the-ground and in-the-air perspectives.
- Find a peer with a hobby or experience you are not familiar with (e.g., ultra-running, pasta-making, dog-training, blog-writing, kid-friendly-travel-planning…)
- Take 3-minutes to each independently write downs as many pain points as you can think of related to that activity
- Compare and contrast the lists against each other
The likelihood is that you will have significant overlap, and some less obvious discrepancies. You might have missed the pains that only make themselves apparent from living the process, and they might have missed the pains that are so embedded into the process that it’s impossible to consider the possibility of anything different.
It is the combination of customers’ real-world experience and designers/innovators/researchers’ expertise that lead to critical and novel insights which can drive new waves of innovation and improved experiences. Getting the right experience is everything: a new idea and sound business model might get you to market, but the experience will determine your right to stay and grow there. The voice of the consumer (VOC) is necessary for success.
There are many ways to solicit the voice of the consumer — I’m at 50-and-counting in my own catalog of methods. Largely, these means fall into two disciplines: consumer experience (CX) research or user experience (UX) research.
CX helps companies improve overall customer satisfaction and loyalty by focusing on the understanding of the customer’s perception and experience with all of the company’s touch points — products, services, and brand. Qualitative methods with smaller sample sizes drive actionable insights on those deeper motivations and behaviors, while large-scale quantitative methods signal new opportunities over time. CX is particularly valuable in building empathy and to inform defining the problem statement at the beginning of the design thinking process.
UX helps companies design user-friendly products that are intuitive and enjoyable to use by understanding how users interact with a website/ application. These activities typically happen towards the end of the design thinking cycle — to inform prototyping and testing.
The VOC is strongly represented alongside expertise at the book ends of innovation — and in the middle if you follow co-creation principles for ideation. So why does success remain illusive and 95% of new products still fail each year? Accenture argues that one more X marks the spot: BX (the business of experience).
BX led companies outperform their CX focused peers by 6.5x year-on-year
The Business of Experience diffuses the expertise and the impetus of uncovering insights from consumer experiences across an organization. The responsibility and accountability of delivering consumer value is tied to every function, not limited to one department’s goals. BX moves beyond a consumer-centricity that elevates touch points to an ingrained mindset and operating model that elevates and aligns with consumers’ purpose. For example, consider the butterfly effects a consumer puts into motion when choosing to use your product/ service… ESG strategies, operational protocols, vendor choices. Are each of these informed by experience-expertise insights and aligned to the same purpose as the consumer- facing activities?
Without BX, insights can get lost or left behind as ideas move across business silos for development and delivery. The benefits of the CX and UX research and activities are not consistently applied. Decision-making can be limited to cost-savings and revenue-generation, neglecting the additional value streams such as reducing consumer effort or risk, saving time or hassle, improving quality or variety for consumers. These all promote long-term success through superior and innovative experiences that fulfill both foundational and higher needs and drive earned growth.
If more space for actionable insights to be discovered between experience and expertise is created throughout organizations, the business of experience can be achieved.
It’s time everyone starts asking what consumers want and what that faster horse really means for your team.
A Fusion publication. We are employees of UHG and these views are our own and not those of the company nor its affiliates.
