Where is the voice of the customer?

So where is the voice of the customer heard today? In the crudest and most basic sense, the voice of the customer is heard when the customer makes a purchase. Simply measuring sales over time will tell the corporation what the customer is saying. But waiting for the customer to signal his/her intentions through measuring a change in buying patterns is a really crude and ineffective way to hear what the customer is saying. By the time the customer has changed buying patterns, it is too late to influence the customer.

In order to be effective, it is necessary to listen to the customer before their buying patterns have changed. The appropriate time to listen to the customer is at the moment when the buying patterns are in a state of flux, not after the patterns have changed.

So is it even possible to listen to the customer before buying patterns have changed? The answer is yes, of course it is possible.

Where then can the voice of the customer...