Empathic Customer Visits have become the mainstay of Voice of the Customer Research (VOC). They are essential tools that must be used if you are going to be able to get to those evasive tacit needs of the customer. These tacit needs are sometimes so evasive, that many think that a new idea just pops into the heads of those that are lucky to have them. However, as Csikszentmihalyi has made us aware of, creative ideas come to those with a prepared mind, and prepared minds are those that have done the hard work.
New ideas for products and services are best not left to chance as ideas rarely just pop into your head without having the hard work done beforehand. Thus, VOC is the way to go. Now I hear you say "What exactly is VOC?" VOC is (Katz, 2004 - see reference and bibliography list in the paper linked below):

1. a set of customer needs determined by research using interviews;
2. in the interviewees original expression or language;
3. and organized and prioritized according to the interviewees perspective and not the researchers perspective.

VOC research is executed using a set of tools designed to prepare and carry out interviews with potential customers, preferably those of your competitors to see what it is they need that your products or services do not deliver, and also to analyze the data to extract the valid needs of the user.

A new white paper, which gives a procedure for carrying out Empathic Customer Visits, is now available on my website. It is called:

Empathic Customer Visits – Asking Questions and Observing the Customer in Context

The file is in PDF format. As always, feedback is welcome.