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But according to a new report from MarketTools , customer feedback isn't a priority at a many organizations, with fewer than half (42 percent) soliciting customer feedback on a continuous basis, and more than 22 percent soliciting feedback only once a year or not at all.

Additionally, 94 percent of companies have yet to leverage social media channels to gather feedback, despite the growing level of engagement in social.

Some additional highlights include:

- Despite the importance given to customer satisfaction, 14 percent of executives surveyed said their companies don't solicit customer feedback at all.

- 46 percent of the executives surveyed rate their company's performance on customer satisfaction in the top 10 percent when compared to their peer companies, and 93 percent rate themselves in the top 50 percent of peer companies.

- More than half of all respondents (56 percent) said their companies do not have, or are not sure if their companies have, a formal voice of the customer program.

- Nearly 24 percent of executives said that they seldom or never use customer feedback to change a business process.

In our "2011 Customer Strategy Trends to Watch" piece, Ginger Conlon spoke to industry experts about their predictions for voice of the customer trends. Many predict greater collection of data and increased action on that information. Hopefully they're right and we'll see 2011 become the year that executives give VOC the attention it desperately deserves.