Listening to the voice of the customer (VOC) and integrating their feedback into our processes has been a transformative focus of my work.

Over the years, I’ve explored innovative ways to break down barriers between organizations and their customers, creating opportunities for deeper understanding and accelerated results.

In an industry where relationships can define success, these strategies have proven invaluable.

In this article, I’ll walk you through my approach to customer feedback and engagement, including the workshop methodology that has reshaped how we at Siemens work with customers and partners. 

The challenge with traditional feedback methods

Let’s talk about feedback mechanisms like net promoter score (NPS). 

If you’re familiar with NPS, you know it’s often used to measure customer satisfaction by asking, “How likely are you to recommend us?” on a scale of 1 to 10. While it has its merits, I call it “NPS and other ineffective methods.” Why? Because it often fails to provide the deeper, actionable insights we’re after.

At Siemens Mobility, we still use NPS—we send out surveys annually, and they receive significant corporate attention. However, the data is often subjective. One person’s “3” might be another person’s “7,” which makes it hard to extract consistent meaning. You see, NPS scores alone don’t tell the full story.

When we started using NPS, we found it fell short in driving meaningful engagement. Sure, our customers would provide a score on how they felt, but they seldom provided any written feedback. It was limited, to say the least.

And yet, our follow-up strategy also had flaws. If someone gave us a low score, we’d follow up to ask, “What’s wrong?” But if someone scored us an 8, 9, or 10, we wouldn’t engage further. 

That was a missed opportunity.

Moving beyond scores to get actionable feedback

Our goal was to foster deeper connections with our customers and gather feedback that could drive real improvements. We had learned by now that merely measuring satisfaction wasn’t enough—we needed actionable results, and traditional methods weren’t delivering. 

That’s when we began exploring alternative strategies to get closer to our customers and understand their needs more effectively.

Stay tuned as I dive into some of the changes we’ve made, the risks we’ve taken, and how stepping outside the usual feedback methods has helped us transform the way we engage with our customers. It’s a journey that continues to shape our approach to customer success.

Creating deeper connections through workshop collaboration

To address the limitations of traditional feedback methods, we developed a workshop approach aimed at fostering true collaboration and integration with our customers. This method has transformed the way we engage, allowing us to better understand our customers and address challenges effectively. 

I’d like to walk you through this approach, share its guiding principles, and highlight the results.

We call it “project acceleration through communication and teamwork”—or PACT for short. It’s a name that encapsulates our goal but, like any method, it’s meaningless unless put into practice. Over time, PACT has become a cornerstone of how we collaborate, not just with customers but also with key suppliers.