Listen Up!

Even so, the company makes sure that the pros' preferences don't collide with the needs of its rank-and-file customers. To avoid that, Burton has at least 10 of its 22 U.S. sales reps out on the slopes each weekend, loaning gear to and riding with amateur snowboarders. But instead of toting clipboards and 50-question surveys, the reps listen to riders and watch what works and what doesn't. Meanwhile, at any given time, two 35-foot trailers are traveling in North America, six buses are crisscrossing Japan, and four trucks are rumbling through Europe, all with the purpose of testing gear on consumers. Burton also has the eTeam -- an online community of 25,000 kids who provide real-time feedback in exchange for trying products for free. "We want to find out whether what the pros say they want also rings true for less-experienced riders," Schriber explains.

But don't get the wrong idea: Listening to the "right" customers doesn't always mean listening to the elite among them. Last year, Agilent Technologies, a Hewlett-Packard spin-off, set out to redefine its health-care-supply business and to rethink customer needs by listening to new categories of customers. For years, Agilent's product managers had considered the doctor in the hospital the company's target customer. Now, however, health-care delivery is occurring everywhere -- in the home, on the street, and in urban and rural clinics. For Agilent, that evolution has created a need to develop high-tech devices for caregivers who had varying levels of medical training, such as home-health aides, paramedics, EMTs, and nurses.

Agilent staffers started listening to those frontline workers and soon discovered that their customers' biggest problem was the trouble that they had listening to their customers -- literally. "Hearing heart murmurs or detecting breathing problems with traditional stethoscopes was becoming increasingly difficult," says Jay Mazelsky, 30, general manager of the medical-supplies business in Agilent's Healthcare Solutions Group, based in Andover, Massachusetts. Although no one had asked for a new type of stethoscope, Agilent realized that stethoscopes were still relying on technology that was more than 100 years old, unlike the cutting-edge science behind most other medical devices. And in reaching that realization, the company identified an unmet need and a market opportunity.

So Agilent and its idea-generating consultant, IdeaScope Associates, came up with an idea for a group of devices -- ones that would make digital recordings of the body's "sound bites," generate printouts of what was heard through a stethoscope, or transmit captured sounds over the phone so that others could help with diagnosis and treatment. Then came the hard part: figuring out how to meet the seemingly diverse needs of caregivers, who wanted devices that were simple to use but that permitted them to make diagnoses while preventing them from making mistakes.

So Agilent created its Stethos Electronic Stethoscope, which blocks out background noises, such as the sound of voices and the hum of machinery. In addition, it offers amplification that is up to 14 times greater than a traditional stethoscope can. One doctor who used Stethos marveled at how she could hear her own heart murmur for the first time.

But when Agilent listened to other doctors, it faced a new dilemma: "We realized that many doctors we spoke with were emotionally attached to their stethoscopes," says Mazelsky. "They had grown accustomed to the appearance, sound, and prestige associated with certain models. It's as much a consumer preference as a professional necessity." So Agilent created a range of marketing programs, including an online education center, to describe the benefits of using an electronic stethoscope and to ensure a continuity with tradition. And the result? During its first six months on the market, sales of Agilent's new electronic stethoscope exceeded those of traditional, acoustic models.

To Listen Smarter, Give Customers Something to Talk About

No matter how closely your company listens to customers, listening is still, at its core, a passive act: Customers express themselves; you try to figure out what they're saying. One way to go beyond that initial round of information is to listen even more carefully, deeply, and closely. Another way to get customers to tell you more is to give them more stuff to talk about.

That's the philosophy at General Electric's GE Plastics, a huge business unit ($7 billion in 1999 revenues) that's nestled in the Berkshire Hills of western Massachusetts. GE Plastics is a megaplayer in a well-defined business. It grows fast only when its customers -- manufacturers of everything from CDs to auto parts -- also grow fast. And rapid growth in a mature market means innovating your own operations as well as those of your customers.