Social Media for VOC

In a recent New York Times article "Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare as Corporate Focus Groups" on July 30 2012, it was noted that producers of hit food and other retail fads are using social media to extract new ideas from consumers, as well as to select which ideas to commercialize.

Younger consumers who are more adept at online communications and can be attracted in larger numbers and more quickly than traditional focus groups. Further, their online profiles are self-populated and can provide much more demographic and attitudinal details than otherwise obtained. Sorting responses by these criteria can yield valuable insight according to age, income, location, and other characteristics important to target marketing.

In recent years, several QFD practitioners have been using social media to acquire Voice of Customer (VOC) data during new product development. QFD, of course, would usually begin well before focus groups were employed to evaluate solution options, in order to acquire VOC to define customer needs and product requirements. In these cases, users are asked to send in videos and photos of their activities and frustrations, usually around a product theme. Other uses are to search personal social media postings for issues related to the new product project.

In my experience, this has proven to be a rich source of candid VOC where the user is directing the script. A kind of virtual "gemba." In one case, we uncovered that one company's product was being abused by young teens, allowing the maker to change the product and make it less prone to tampering.

Of course, like any customer gemba data, these are only inputs to a deeper QFD analysis that includes translating VOC into prioritized customer needs, product requirements, and features. These features can be tested again using social media as described in the above captioned article.