Customers are sharing their opinion about your company. They are sharing it not only with you, but also with their friends, with your competitors, and in some cases with the whole world. Are you really listening to what they're saying? If you don't, your competitors will.

As technology enables deeper voice of the customer (VoC) insight, opportunities arise to take advantage of customer insight for product development, service enhancement, and long-term relationship-building with individual customers. Many companies have VoC efforts in place, but too few are taking full advantage of the potential.

The key is to create processes around customer feedback and insight to become a "listening organization," says Rob Key, CEO of social media consultancy Converseon. "In 2008 companies needed to track voice of the customer," he says. "In 2009 new tools emerged to collect new customer information, but the information was still siloed. 2010 will see the maturing of the industry. Voice of the customer programs need to grow up and be infused across the enterprise."