There’s very little that is more important to your business’ success than listening to your customers. The customer voice is a guiding force that lets you know what you’re doing right, and even more importantly, what you need do to win business in a competitive marketplace.

That’s why PMMI is so committed to providing the customer voice — at meetings like the upcoming Executive Leadership Conference (San Antonio, April 15–17) and the Annual Meeting (Sept. 10-12; Spokane, Wash.), and with business intelligence resources like the Purchasing Index, the Customer Attitudes and Behaviors Study and, most recently, “Service Issues and Expectations.”

I highly recommend you take a few minutes to read the ”Service Issues and Expectations” report and attend the companion webinar on February 8. The study details what your customers want and expect during and after installation, including maintenance, technical service, training and documentation, sourcing, spare parts inventory and sourcing, and remote troubleshooting.

Some things I learned from this report:

• Our customers see a great dichotomy among our technicians: They’re seeing veteran technicians who are having trouble working on and with computer-based systems, and younger technicians who face similar problems with mechanical equipment.
• While a majority find our technicians satisfactory, more than half also think we need more experienced, knowledgeable technicians.
• In some cases, our issues with finding knowledgeable technicians have become such a burden to our customers that they have hired their own technical staff to support machinery.

PMMI has gathered a lot of information on this increasingly vital subject, and it’s a topic I’m sure we’ll hear more about in the coming months as we meet customers in our day-to-day activities. It will also be a highlight of the upcoming MarketTrends Roundtable Conference (May 15-16; Chicago, Ill.), where report author Donna Ritson will discuss the study’s findings in depth.