While many senior executives continue to talk about the "voice of the customer," few demonstrate their commitment to this concept by spending time with customers. Many continue to use their intuition or `golden gut' in their attempt to provide superior customer value. Unfortunately, `senior executive intuition' is rarely attuned to the needs of their customers. While the competitive environment continues to intensify, executives have cut back on the time devoted to customers just when it should be increasing. This article discusses the need for senior executives to spend time with customers and provides examples of the benefits that this approach will provide.

Everyone in business knows that organizations must adapt to changes in the environment especially to changes in their customers' value proposition. Underlying this basic marketing concept is, for many business people, an extremely unpalatable realitywhat you are doing now will never be good enough! Your organization must continue to improve in everything that it does. Even if your organization is a dominant No. 1 in your market, you cannot relax for a momentyou must continuously improve. Your competitors are not sitting around thinking, "Well, we need to become accustomed to being No. 1 or 2." They are working night and day on improving their offering and hoping to become the new No. 1 in their market. In addition to reacting to your competitors' actions, you must also proactively respond to your customers' increasing expectations. Constant and continuous improvement creates a daunting and relentless environment that could overwhelm your organization if it does not have a clear and effective process for proactively responding to the changes in the marketplace.

When the customer is the true focal point of your organization, you are heavily invested in and committed to the "voice of the customer." Staying abreast of the "voice of the customer" process involves a seemingly obvious step - monitoring the evolution of your customer's value proposition. This entails `research' but not necessarily an exhaustive, technically daunting, and, in many cases, costly study. Large, quantitatively based studies, while certainly valuable in certain situations, are often not the best solution for even large, well-funded companies and are often out-of-reach financially for most small and mid-size organizations. However, many companies have become enamored with quantitative market research for two reasons: 1) the quantitative aspect implies a high level of credibility and legitimacy, and 2) the very sophisticated manner in which most studies are presented. Of course, we know that quantitative research can lead to many errors and significant market missteps. Keep in mind that `New Coke' and Ford's `Edsel' were two of the most heavily researched products in history.

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