Testimonials and Voice of Customer (VoC) data are not the same thing.
You gather testimonials with one goal. It’s to offer social proof to prospective customers that your offerings are great.
They help people see themselves using your service or product.
They help counter objections.
They are always net-positive (and almost always only positive).
But when it comes to VoC, you want it to be critical, raw, unfiltered.
Yes, you will end up using many of the words and phrases you gather during a VoC research project. You’ll work them into your website, ads, and emails.
But not in a way that attributes it to the person who said it.
You want people in VoC surveys and interviews to be completely honest. You don’t want them worrying about “sounding good” (or worse, being “nice” or “kind” or “complimentary”).
In fact, that’s one of the best reasons to outsource your customer interviews. You’re more likely to get honest feedback.
You get a sense of how people really feel about the problem you’re helping to solve. You’ll learn what else could solve it for them and how close you were to losing to that other solution.
Not testimonials, but very very useful information.
Copywriter’s gold.
If you ever need someone to do some VoC gold mining for you, please reach out. I’d love to be at least a starting point in your journey.
Gold together,
James
P.S. For more on VoC research and how I do it, check out this series:
When and how to talk to your customers:
- Set up 6-10 ~40-minute interviews with your customers
- Get 25-100 customer surveys, peppered with open-ended questions
- Set up an on-site pop-up to poll non-customer visitors
P.P.S. This has been Tactical Tuesday (<– making sure it’s searchable for later)
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