Voice-of-customer research, VOC, includes a family of direct and indirect market study techniques used in creating new products.  Face-to-face VOC contact can be a particularly powerful tool for eliciting customer priorities.  At a recent PSN Member roundtable meeting, Dennis Hack, a Product Planning Specialist with medical imaging manufacturer MEDRAD, reflected on making the face-to-face technique work in the early stages of new product planning.  Among his observations:

• Before starting a formal VOC process, create a charter that defines the study's focus and scope; the ideal process requires identifying the research method's cost, schedule and level of detail. Get each of your stakeholders to sign off on the charter before beginning.
• The individual responsible for new product planning should lead the VOC process. But it takes a cross-functional team to make it succeed. That team should include a subject matter expert, a technical/product development person, and project or program managers. The technical person's role is to transfer the product's rationale to the development team. The project manager's role is to oversee detailed tasks, analysis and documentation associated with a VOC effort.
• The purpose of a VOC visit is to gather information and advice from the customer, not to sell them anything. So don't bring your sales people along on research visits; they tend to view their time with customers as an opportunity to sell, which ends up distorting the study's learning objectives.
• Don't let anyone get between you and your end customers. End customers include all those who make or influence purchasing decisions including, in addition to the hands-on users themselves, the customer's purchasing and maintenance organizations as well as its finance and business executives, particularly for enterprise-wide products.
• Be wary about solutions or product features proposed by customers. The job of VOC research is to understand the real root problem so that your engineers can find innovative ways of solving those problems.
• To help customers think outside the box, hand them a Magic Wand and ask them to imagine what they'd really like to have. You'll be amazed at what you learn when a customer's wishes and imagination are freed from practical constraints.
• One of the outcomes of an effective VOC process should be an initial draft of the claims that will eventually appear in the product's sales literature. Document each claim and share them with your development team early on.
• Take the time to get the market requirements right at the beginning of the process. Getting to market first with the wrong product doesn't help anyone. 
• The customer is always right, but not everyone is a customer.