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I recently saw a great video from the author and thought leader Malcolm Gladwell. Basically, his point is that when it comes to data, less is more. The story he tells is that when emergency room physicians were given less information about critical patients - only the most important data - they were more effective in their diagnosis.

What does that mean for your company, and especially the voice of your customers? Are you capturing the right information? Are you gathering customer data that simply isn’t critical?
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Your first reaction to this question is to say “of course not.” No sane company in today’s economy—or any economy for that matter—wants to irritate its customers. That’s a no-brainer, right?

What would your customers say if they were asked? What irritating policies and procedures does your company have in place? Here are a few examples that I have run across recently:
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In an attempt to fill the gaps in my pop culture knowledge, I recently watched the last season of the acclaimed series, The Sopranos. My favorite scene? Sitting in his psychiatrist’s office reflecting on his close brush with death, his joy to be alive, and his unrelenting problems, Tony Soprano confesses: “I realize now that each day is a gift … just, does it always have to be socks?”

We all have days when we feel like Tony—a customer’s legitimate complaint, an untrained employee passing along bad information, an error that you catch only as your presentation hits the giant screen in front of hundreds. Another sock? Perhaps. But it’s also an opportunity to begin to connect the dots and better understand the problem.

Is it an isolated issue or part of a larger pattern? (As my first manager was fond of saying, “How many cars have to go by before it’s a train?”) And so the digging begins. What’s the cause? The frequency? The source? The effects? What happens if we don’t fix this problem? Who do I need to involve in analyzing it? If this were resolved or improved, how could it change the business?

Let the brainstorming begin. What starts off as a trigger for high blood pressure can turn into an “aha” moment. It doesn’t always have to be socks.

Rhonda Sunnarborg, Senior Consultant
E.G. Insight

The 2008 year-end special feature in the Stillwater Gazette (Minnesota) featured the following about E.G. Insight’s involvement in a community survey:

“E.G. Insight Managing Partner Gary Gerds told District 834 board members he offered to conduct the survey at no cost partly because he hoped to help the school system meet challenges that didn’t exist when his two children were students in the district.

‘Like it or not, you’ve got a lot of competition … so you need to understand your strengths and your opportunities, and how you can leverage those to compete more effectively,’ he said.
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