MM: Great. I’m going to use this opportunity, Bob, to circle back on a topic that you introduced earlier. The term that you used was, “Voice of the customer.”

BK: Yes.

MM: I’m familiar with the term from my exposure into Six Sigma and Lean Six Sigma. More of a formal quantification of customer satisfaction and utilization rates and things like that. What do you mean, when you’re using “Voice of the Customer,” as it relates to customer experience management? What does that entail? Where’s it been and where’s it going?

BK: “Voice of the Customer” speaks to technologies that allow for direct customer dialog in an online environment. Primarily this takes the form of surveys and direct customer feedback. In particular there are two companies leading in this solution space: iPerceptions and ForeSee Results. Both have compelling solutions and back it up with consulting from business analysts helping clients to take action on the data collected.

Another emerging opportunity for customer feedback is mining content in social media environments including Blogs, Chat rooms, Facebook and MySpace, etc. Gaining access to this data and being able to aggregate remarks into categories could provide online marketers with tremendous insight about brand perception and loyalty, competitive and complimentary products or services, and many other associations.

The bottom line is companies need to get direct customer responses to add with statistics gathered in other interactions so they have a complete 360-view of their online visitors.