Recently, I wrote about the importance of listening to the voice of your customer. Today, I have two examples for you to illustrate how important it really is.
I hired a local plumber to clean out a clogged drain. They understand the importance of customer feedback and the voice of the customer so they send out cards requesting customer evaluation of their service. It's a good thing to do. Customer feedback like that can pinpoint things that need improvement and things your people are doing well.

The problem is that the service call was several months ago. I got the card in today's mail. Not only have I already forgotten the details of the service call, the fact that they waited so long to ask for my opinion makes me wonder how interested in it they really are. As I point out in my article Customer Satisfaction Survey, timing is very important.

The second example is Baskin-Robbins. My wife ordered a birthday cake for our daughter. She asked me to pick it up on the way home. Chocolate roll cake with chocolate mint ice cream. Pretty simple. The problem in this case was when I got there it wasn't a roll cake as ordered. It was a portion of a flat cake. Sure, it was the same size and it will feed the same number of people. The problem is it isn't what we ordered. Now, I probably only do about $100 a year in business with this store. They probably won't even notice that I've taken my business elsewhere (which I will because this is the third or fourth time we've had problems with them). But you have to wonder how many other customers have had the same sort of experience and have also taken their business elsewhere. Listening to the Voice of the Customer also includes the simple task of getting orders right over the phone.