1. Record Everyday VOC notes in your CRM

When you finish your customer call, it's time to clean up your notes and send them in 2 directions.

During the customer visit, you probably took hand-written notes or did some fast typing. In either case, you'll probably need to a) clean up your notes, and b) enter them into your CRM (customer relationship management) software.

Here are some tips for doing this. Your goal should be for any reader in the future to read your notes and feel as though they "had been there" with you.

You might have a lot of information to record from your visit, such as...

• customer job changes
• order status
• industry trends
• competitive pricing information

Record the above as you normally would, but treat Everyday VOC customer outcomes differently. For these, you should either have a separate entry field in your CRM... or at least include a separate "outcome" paragraph for each. Put your Outcome Statement (Clarify) at the top if each outcome entry, followed by your "What" and "Why" notes.

You should send your notes in 2 directions:

• To Customer: Send some portion of these notes to the customer you just met with. This lets them correct you, but more important, it signals you are a professional that is interested in what they had to say.
• To CRM: Enter your notes in your CRM. Unless you have an amazing memory, you'll need these notes to review before your next customer visit. And these notes can be used later by your marketing or product management staff for "Market Scouting" (data-mining to detect trends in customer needs).

Keywords: CRM, customer relationship management, notes, Everyday VOC,  hand-written, clean up, customer outcome, what, why, clarify, outcome statement