Executive Summary

On a recent project, a Tier 1 supplier to OEMs wanted to gauge the global “voice of the customer” via in country interviews of its key customer R&D partners. For the Japanese interviews, they relied on my extensive cultural and linguistic Japanese experience to get it right. I translated their survey materials, then conducted and synthesized the key learnings from the interviews across a variety of desirable attributes. This ensured a nuanced and more accurate result.

Key learnings:

  • For an authentic “voice of the customer” it is critical to conduct first language interviews
  • Surveys conducted across cultures often reveal value judgments on personality and culture traits – this will not emerge without interviewers being nuanced in the local culture
  • This client took great care to make sure all its senior personnel heard the results directly from the survey professionals – creating a powerful shared understanding of the customer voice

First Language Interviews

The interviews were conducted face to face in the first language of the respondents to gather as closely as possible the essence of the voice of the customer. This included interviews across 4 continents, and relied heavily on the client’s local sales teams to set up the interviews.

Channel Leverage

Very clearly the image of the client varied dramatically across markets. This was in part due to capability gaps in certain markets, but much can also be explained by variances between the natural cultural tendencies of the client vs the desired business and cultural values by market. For example, views of the client’s quality and adaptability varied among respondents from the same OEM but different countries.

Dissemination of Results

The client took great care to share the results of the survey within days after gathering the data. This allowed the client personnel to act quickly vs key findings, but also to weave those findings into their ongoing dialogues with customer personnel – who had often participated in the survey and wanted to know they had been heard.