Voice of the Customer Research

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Voice of Customer Research uncovers customer needs.

The Voice of Customer Research technique identifies the customers’ wants and needs by organizing and prioritizing them. The research is based on the extent to which they are satisfying relative to other product or service choices.

Ideas generated by VOC research can either improve current products or help develop new ones.  As an example, consider air travel and what has been disrupting this industry.  Changes allowed for seat location and legroom, fully reclinable seats, and the allowable number. In addition, the fees for carry-on luggage, meals, and snacks, just to name a few. On the other hand, some carriers now provide wi-fi and limited in-flight entertainment for free. VOC played a role in making changes and determining how to price and promote them to maximize overall profits.

How Industrial Leaders Convert Voice of the Customer Research Into Revenue

Voice of the Customer research separates industrial firms that grow accounts from those that defend them. The difference is structural, not stylistic.

In B2B industrial markets, buying committees stretch across procurement, engineering, operations, and finance. Each function defines value differently. A pump manufacturer wins on uptime metrics with maintenance leads, total cost of ownership with finance, and integration ease with controls engineers. A single satisfaction score across that committee tells the supplier almost nothing. The firms gaining share treat Voice of the Customer as a structured intelligence program tied to specific decisions: pricing architecture, aftermarket revenue strategy, installed base analytics, and supplier qualification audit outcomes.

What Separates a Voice of the Customer Program From a Survey

A survey measures sentiment. A Voice of the Customer program decomposes the buying decision into the variables a supplier can act on. The distinction matters because industrial purchases are won on three to five attributes, and those attributes shift by segment, geography, and lifecycle stage.

Consider a hydraulic systems supplier selling into mobile equipment OEMs. Caterpillar, Deere, and Komatsu each weight reliability, service network density, and bill of materials cost differently depending on platform age and end-market exposure. A program that fails to segment by platform produces an averaged answer that fits no customer. The result is a roadmap that improves nothing measurable.

SIS International Research has consistently found across B2B expert interview programs in industrial categories that the highest-impact insights come not from broad customer panels but from contrasting the behaviors of overperforming accounts against underperforming ones within the same buyer profile. The behavioral delta, not the average response, drives the commercial action.

Why Buying Committee Mapping Drives Better Voice of the Customer Outcomes

Industrial decisions involve five to nine influencers. Each holds veto power over different attributes. Procurement controls price and supplier qualification audit thresholds. Engineering controls specification language. Operations controls aftermarket revenue strategy and installed base analytics. Finance controls total cost of ownership models. C-suite controls strategic supplier designation.

Voice of the Customer programs that interview only the procurement contact produce price-centric findings because that is what procurement optimizes. Programs that map the full committee surface the trade-offs that explain why bids are won or lost on non-price terms. Predictive maintenance sizing studies for rotating equipment suppliers, for example, repeatedly show that reliability engineers will accept a higher purchase price when service interval data is provided in a format that integrates with their CMMS. Procurement never raises this. Reliability engineering does.

The Three-Layer Structure Behind Effective Voice of the Customer Research

The strongest industrial Voice of the Customer programs operate on three layers, each answering a different question.

Source: SIS International Research

Programs that combine all three layers produce findings that survive executive scrutiny. Programs that rely on attitudinal data alone produce satisfaction reports that age within two quarters.

How Leading Industrial Firms Operationalize Voice of the Customer Findings

The conversion rate from research to revenue depends on how findings link to existing decision cycles. Three patterns appear consistently across industrial leaders.

Tying findings to the bill of materials. Suppliers to ABB, Siemens, and Schneider Electric who reframe Voice of the Customer findings against bill of materials optimization conversations move from procurement defense to engineering partnership. The research output becomes a costed change request rather than a satisfaction summary.

Linking findings to aftermarket revenue strategy. Equipment manufacturers with strong installed base analytics use Voice of the Customer programs to identify which service tiers customers will pay premiums for. The output is a tiered service catalog with confirmed willingness-to-pay, not a generic loyalty score.

Embedding findings in supplier qualification audit responses. Tier-one suppliers facing reshoring feasibility evaluations from US and European OEMs use Voice of the Customer evidence to preempt audit objections. The research becomes a sales asset, not a passive report.

Across SIS International’s B2B expert interview engagements with industrial OEMs and tier suppliers, programs structured around a defined post-research decision (a pricing change, a service tier launch, a qualification response) generate measurable revenue outcomes within two cycles. Programs commissioned without that decision anchor rarely move beyond the executive readout.

The SIS Three-Lens Framework for Industrial Voice of the Customer

SIS International applies a three-lens framework when scoping Voice of the Customer engagements in industrial categories:

• Account Lens: What does this specific buyer reward and penalize across the lifecycle?
• Segment Lens: How do reward patterns shift across platform, geography, and end-market exposure?
• Competitive Lens: Where do incumbent and challenger suppliers create or close gaps?

The lenses are sequential. Account-level findings without segment context produce anecdote. Segment findings without competitive context produce inward-facing roadmaps. The competitive lens converts the program into a market position assessment rather than a customer satisfaction exercise.

Why Voice of the Customer Programs Are Expanding Across Industrial Categories

Three structural shifts have raised the value of Voice of the Customer research in industrial markets over the past decade. End-market consolidation has reduced the number of strategic accounts, raising the cost of any single loss. Aftermarket revenue strategy has become the primary margin pool for equipment OEMs, requiring service-level intelligence that procurement contacts cannot provide. Predictive maintenance sizing and connected equipment data have created new pricing conversations that did not exist a decade ago.

The firms capturing share are running Voice of the Customer programs with the same cadence and rigor as financial planning. The output feeds pricing committees, product roadmaps, and account plans on a fixed schedule.

Designing a Voice of the Customer Program That Produces Decisions

The strongest programs share four design choices. They define the decision before the research begins. They interview across the full buying committee, not just the named contact. They contrast overperforming and underperforming accounts within the same segment. They publish findings against a fixed cycle aligned to budget and pricing decisions.

Voice of the Customer research is no longer a satisfaction tool. In industrial markets, it is the primary mechanism for converting account intelligence into commercial action.

About SIS International

SIS International offers Quantitative, Qualitative, and Strategy Research. We provide data, tools, strategies, reports, and insights for decision-making. We also conduct interviews, surveys, focus groups, and other Market Research methods and approaches. Contact us for your next Market Research project.