As practitioners in the customer feedback game, we are only too aware of customer voices falling on deaf ears. And with the explosion of social media the imbalance between "user generated content" vs "enterprise generated action" has become the herculean challenge. Which is why any mechanism that enables an organisation to listen more effectively is, well frankly, gold.

Hence our interest in data visualisation. It is no great surprise that despite building healthy online communities of tens or hundreds of thousands of members, or surveying customers to within an inch of their lives, big brands are sometimes lousy at listening or distilling what is being said by customers. Other than perhaps a Marketing sponsor or Community Manager who is going to take the trouble to trawl through a thread on a community forum or join the dots across polls, surveys and  ideas. Too much trouble for too little reward!

However, what if you can "dial up" your customer feedback like this. Or visualise relativities like this:

Making customer feedback data visual makes it difficult to ignore; and if it tells a story - particularly through the words of a real customer then you are tapping into something very fundamental about the way we communicate.

Stay tuned for some exciting developments in this area.