This Article was first published in the April 2024 Issue of Construction Business Owner Magazine:  The Strategic Significance of Customer Research - How contractors can gather & implement feedback to better position their company for growth.

In the architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) industry where projects are complex, collaboration is key and customer satisfaction is critically important, the relevance of your customers’ opinion carries significant weight.

Making the customer the focal point of a business strategy is not just a customer service tactic — it’s necessary for long-term success, growth and resilience in an ever-evolving business environment. It aligns your business with market demands and positions it for sustainable and profitable growth.

To do this, you have to know your customer.

The Voice of Your Customer research, often abbreviated as VoC, is a systematic process aimed at collecting and analyzing customer feedback. It delves into the thoughts, preferences and needs of your customers and project stakeholders.

For AEC contracting and professional service organizations, this research is more than a customer satisfaction survey: The application of VoC becomes a strategic imperative, shaping how businesses service and communicate with other industry partners and customers. VoC studies that gather insights and feedback can provide direction for your business strategy, guiding your decisions, clarifying your competitive advantage and informing your approach to business development and marketing.

They can serve as a bridge between the technical expertise of the delivery team and the expectations of customers, providing insights that are essential for success. Customer research also builds trust. When customers see that you value their opinions and are actively working to meet their needs, they’re more likely to stick around and become loyal advocates for your brand.

Getting It Done

Now that you recognize the importance of VoC research studies, you have to get it done. Here are a few tips to help you get started:

• Preparation is key — To be able to connect the dots between customer feedback and strategic decision-making, take time to conduct an internal audit before you begin your customer research. This enables you to compare your internal perspective to your customers, allowing you to translate your research into actionable insights and plans.
• Select the right customers — Carefully select the customers you want to interview and whose opinions you value. Consider the customer organizations most impactful to your organization and that operate in sectors that offer opportunity. Eliminate customers who are not a good fit for your organization. So, take time to consider what a good customer looks like for your business.
• Select the right interview format — In the AEC industry where projects are tailored to customer needs, one-on-one interviews provide a depth of understanding that is hard to achieve through surveys or group settings. The personalized interaction of interviews allows the discussion to explore specific issues, probe deeper into customer experiences and uncover insights that might be missed in other formats.
• Engage an experienced third-party interviewer — Interviews conducted by an independent entity rather than the business itself reduce the chance that customers provide responses they think your business wants to hear. Be sure the third-party party is knowledgeable of the AEC industry and can interpret and understand the nuances of the customer response. This will ensure that meaningful insights can be extracted that might be overlooked by someone without a solid understanding of the industry.

Case in point: The importance of this was discussed with Dan Gregory at CLR Design, who said, “We worked with other consultants in search of statements that defined us. But we lacked a convincing way to connect these abstract statements with specific, outstanding outcomes for our clients. Recognizing this gap, we conducted comprehensive research. The VoC report provided cogent insights from our staff and customers. … connecting the dots between our design ideas and their real-world outcomes.”

Finding Actionable Insights

Connecting customer feedback to strategic decision-making is a critically important step, and often a stumbling block for studies that are not carefully planned and executed.

• To make the data actionable, it’s essential to analyze areas where customer expectations align with your goals and where they deviate. This is the foundation for action plans. So, be sure to review your internal audits.
• Interpretation of the feedback should go beyond surface value, so, look for patterns, trends and correlations that are not immediately apparent. This approach provides insights into how the market perceives your brand and competitive position.
• Carefully vetting the feedback is crucial. Not all feedback holds equal importance, so prioritize it against your organization’s mission and values. This ensures efficient allocation of resources to address the most impactful action items that come from the feedback.

Case study: Here is what Jessica Myers, president of a commercial construction company, says about customer research: “A key outcome of the VoC research was understanding what our value drivers were from our customers. It helped us to create a plan and process that can be followed by our entire team, that is scalable, and will keep us accountable to our strategic plan for our company.”

Putting It to Use

Now that you have collected, reviewed and analyzed the feedback, here are a few ways to put the research to work:

• Train the project team — By understanding what customers value and expect in terms of service, employees can be trained to recognize and respond to these expectations. This might involve communication skills, project management abilities or technical expertise.
• Build empathy for customer-centric solutions — Empathy is a powerful driver of customer satisfaction. VoC research sheds light on the human side of business, revealing the emotions, challenges and aspirations of customers as people. Training programs can incorporate VoC insights that help professionals to better connect with customers and aid in development problem-solving.
• Enhance project stakeholder relationships — When project professionals can connect customer feedback to decision making, they can more effectively communicate with project stakeholders. This transparency builds trust with customers as well as trade and design partners, demonstrating a commitment to actively addressing their concerns and improving collaboration.
• Tailor marketing messages — VoC feedback can be a valuable guide for tailoring your marketing messages to directly address customer needs, preferences and concerns. This customer-centric approach not only enhances the effectiveness of marketing campaigns but also strengthens the overall relationship between the business and your customers.
• Seller-doer training — VoC feedback serves as a strategic tool for seller-doers, shaping their selling and service delivery approaches to align closely with customer expectations. By leveraging these insights, seller-doers can build stronger customer relationships, enhance the effectiveness of sales efforts and drive overall business success in the seller-doer model.

Case study: In an interview with a leading national design-build firm, CEO Rob Steigerwald shared his insights:  “The details of the voice of the customer research became the theme of our business development, elevator speeches and our seller-doer training. Additionally, the VoC uncovered the most important part of our unique engineering process that our customers value, and what differentiates us from our competitors. … Our marketing focused on this from that day forward.”

By conducting a VoC study, businesses can align their strategies more closely with customer expectations, leading to increased satisfaction, loyalty and, ultimately, business success. It’s a valuable tool for maintaining a customer-centric approach and adapting to evolving market demands.  

If you think selling is not your job, Think again!

Today’s economy requires that everyone provide value to your organization and business leaders need everyone to contribute to winning new work.  Whether you’re responsible for generating revenue or just engaging with your customers, you’re involved in the sales process. Today, being great at what you do is just not enough.

AEC Organizations need to retain existing business, cross-sell services among practice groups or divisions, and find new opportunities for work – a formidable task in a marketplace that is competitive and crowded.   It requires brand differentiation, well planned business development initiatives, and proving to your clients that you understand their business.  To execute, it requires alignment between sales, marketing and operations and requires that everyone contribute.
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Here are 3 steps to getting everyone aligned and involved in winning new work:

Step 1  Define Your Business

The AEC Building Industry is saturated and highly competitive and organizations risk being selected on price if not fully differentiated from their competition.  The more defined you are about what you do and how it benefits your clients the better positioned you are to win more work.  Make sure you have a well-defined Position Statement and Value Proposition and make sure that everyone in your organization understands your message and how to tell your story.
Most importantly, be clear about what your customers value about doing business with your company. If you are not sure, do your homework and talk to your customers.

Step 2   Develop a Plan

A Strategic Sales and Marketing Plan helps to provide direction and focus for all employees. It points to specific results that are to be achieved and establishes a course of action for achieving them. A strategic plan also helps the various departments within your organization align themselves with common goals. Without a clear plan, expectations are developed in a void, priorities change constantly and there is little or no alignment with common goals.  For technical Doer-Sellers, establishing a personal marketing plan is the key to finding time in your schedule for sales.

Step 3  Set Personal Goals

In sales, goals are the engine of productivity.  One of the most powerful things about establishing specific goals in your Sales and Marketing Plan is that it becomes your scorecard – it includes indicators for how you are doing.  These indicators allow you to look critically at your sales and marketing activities and make adjustments.   Regular reviews to analyze your results and make adjustments will keep your plan relevant and on target.

Whether you are in a sales and marketing function for an A/E/C company or whether you are part of the technical team you have some responsibility for impacting new business development – whether it is in your job description or not. You have to sell yourself and your contribution to the business every day.

Start with the 3 steps defined above, or contact us or how we can help your team:

• We use a structured process to develop a scalable program for your Organization.  The SDblueprint is based on AEC best practices and was developed over decades of working with the best design, construction and business development professionals in the AEC Industry.

• We arm your key project professionals to help win work...without becoming salesmen.  We use research, facts and data to arm your team with the insights needed to become successful doers and sellers of work. We eliminate the noise of typical sales training and focus on actions that drive AEC project awards.

• Our Seller-Doer Blueprint combines learning, practicing and doing - producing immediate results for your company and building confidence in your team members for long-term success.

Blueprint Growth Consulting advises business owners, leaders and organizations on how to plan to win. With a mission to arm everyone in an organization to help win new work, we offer a practical approach to planning and implementation that demystifies strategy and guides our clients through key steps to building a plan for growth.

Read more about our results by visiting www.BDblueprint.com/results