In a market where customer expectations evolve faster than a TikTok trend, building a strategy based on assumptions is a risk most businesses can’t afford. Yet, many still do. Most companies don’t actually know what their customers think.

They’ll say they do. They’ll nod along in meetings and point to a dashboard or an NPS score or a recent anecdote from a sales rep. But when it comes down to it? They’re guessing. Maybe educated guessing, maybe gut-feel guessing, but still guessing.

And when you’re building your marketing, sales, and growth strategies based on that kind of shaky intel? You’re not being innovative. You’re being reckless.

Enter Voice of the Customer (VOC) research. Not the lip-service kind. Not the “we sent out a 6-question survey and called it insight” kind. The real kind. The kind that actually tells you what your customers (and partners and stakeholders) are thinking, feeling, and not saying out loud.

At &Marketing, we use VOC research to help businesses stop spinning in circles and start making moves that are grounded in reality—not assumptions, not echo chambers, not wishful thinking. Just clarity. Because growth comes from listening.

VOC Research: Your Missing Piece for Smarter Strategy

Imagine trying to run your business without any financial reports. No revenue tracking. No expenses. Just vibes. That sounds ridiculous, right?

And yet that’s exactly how most companies treat their customer relationships. They’re not measuring perception. They’re not validating what’s working and what’s not. They’re making bets on messaging, product positioning, and go-to-market plans without talking to the people they’re supposedly serving.

Companies that build VOC into their process make better decisions. Full stop. They see higher satisfaction, more conversions, stronger referrals, and fewer “how did we not see that coming?” moments. And the kicker? Most of the time, the insight was right there just waiting to be asked.

So what does real VOC look like? It’s not sending out a bland feedback form and hoping people care enough to fill it out. It’s starting with an actual business question—something like “why aren’t leads converting?” or “why did that referral program flatline?”—and building your research around it.

Then comes the good stuff: conversations. Not surveys. Not a ten-second pop-up on your website. Real, one-on-one conversations with customers, partners, and other key players who can tell you what’s working, what’s frustrating, and where the opportunities are hiding. The stuff they won’t say in a survey? That’s the gold. That’s where your strategy shifts from guesswork to “holy sh*t, now we get it.”

From there, we analyze the responses—not just to see what’s trending, but to find the outliers, the contradictions, the truths that haven’t been acknowledged yet. We organize them into something useful. Themes, takeaways, even a SWOT if you’re into that sort of thing. But we don’t stop there.

Because a pile of insights with no follow-through is just a fancier version of doing nothing. So we help our clients actually do something with what we’ve found. Below is a breakdown of our approach.

The &Marketing VOC Framework

We don’t do checkbox surveys or passive listening. Our VOC research framework is purpose-built to uncover strategic insights that move the needle.

1. Define the Right Business Challenge: Every project starts with clarity. Are you struggling to convert leads? Is partner engagement lagging? Do referrals feel stagnant? We tailor our approach to your most pressing growth questions.
2. Build a Purpose-Driven Interview Guide: Our custom interview guides are designed around your goals and informed by best practices from decades of experience. No fluff—just focused, insight-generating questions.
3. Conduct Conversations, Not Just Surveys: Surveys can tell you what—but not why. Real conversations reveal emotional drivers, objections, unmet needs, and hidden opportunities that surface-level feedback misses.
4. Analyze for Insights, Trends, and Outliers: We synthesize qualitative data into actionable insights. Expect trends, surprising outliers, and a clear view of your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT).
5. Activate the Findings: Insights are only useful if they drive action. Our implementation roadmapping process helps businesses turn insights into tactical next steps, ensuring the research drives real change and measurable impact.

Best Practices for Getting VOC Right

Let’s talk about the elephant in the boardroom: most teams don’t do VOC research because they think they already know the answers. They’ve been in the industry for years. They’ve done the customer journey mapping exercises. They’ve sat in enough sales calls to feel like they’ve got the full picture.

But you can’t read the label from inside the jar. The further you get from your customers, the more your perspective gets warped by org charts, internal politics, and the subtle delusion that your gut is always right.

VOC research is your way out. It’s the difference between thinking you have product-market fit and knowing it. Between wondering why deals are stalling and hearing it straight from the source. Between rolling out a new message that falls flat and one that lands like it was written inside your customer’s brain. If you want to make it work, here’s what we’ve learned:

1. Have a real reason. Don’t do VOC because someone said you should. Do it because you have a specific challenge to solve or decision to make.
2. Keep it human. Conversations beat checkboxes, every single time.
3. Guarantee anonymity. If you want honesty, you need to make it safe to tell the truth.
4. Make it part of your rhythm. VOC isn’t a one-off project. It’s an ongoing habit.
5. Tie it to actual KPIs. Want better retention, referrals, or conversion rates? Great. Ask the questions that get you there.

At &Marketing, we help growth-minded companies stop assuming and start acting on real insight. If you’re tired of building strategies in the dark, let’s talk. We’ll help you actually hear what your customers are saying, then show you what to do about it.