In previous We're Listening Blog posts, we've talked about the various ways we listen to our customers and partners. Rich sources of feedback (including surveys, but also focus groups, advisory boards and events) help give us a comprehensive picture of where our customers would like to see improvement in their end-to-end experience with Cisco. Our Cisco Live! events are one of these sources of feedback.

As we gear up for the next Cisco Live! in Las Vegas July 10-14, I invited Lauren Wright from Cisco Marketing to share how her team has been thinking outside the box for interesting and fun ways to gather customer input. Lauren is a Marketing Manager in Digital Marketing for the Americas region.

 By: Lauren Wright, Marketing Manager

I'm part of a small but mighty team comprised of individuals from different backgrounds and functions.  We came together because of a shared passion -our customer's experience with Cisco.  This passion fueled us to find a creative way of reaching customers and gathering their feedback and insights.  We asked ourselves, "How can we talk to a lot of customers all at once?"  The answer? Cisco Live!  Our main customer-focused conference would be the perfect place to engage with customers.  What better way to get feedback than to go where our customers are already gathering.

Our idea to collect feedback and insights stems from the principles of Design Thinking mixed with ethnographic research methodologies.  We incorporated these to create an interactive booth aimed at understanding how you, our customer, feel about your different encounters with Cisco.

We asked customers to have a seat at the booth and walk us through their most recent experience buying a Cisco product. We wanted to understand the triggers, hurdles and trade-offs they made or encountered while finding and buying the right solution.

To make it fun, we used a game-board to help customers articulate their buying process and allow us to ask questions as they walked us through it.

We found the game board to be an extremely effective way to have customers express what it was like interacting with Cisco at various points in their buying process. But, fear not! Collecting the feedback and insights doesn't stop there. We've taken all of the fantastic info provided by customers, and are continuously trying to integrate it with Cisco's various functions to iterate and get to a better overall experience. A big THANK YOU to all the customers who came by the Cisco Experience Lab at Cisco Live! San Diego.

We also  wanted to get to know our customers outside the US so we recently took our show on the international road to Cisco Live! Berlin. There we partnered with the Global Customer Success team to do our fill-in-the-blank whiteboard wall: "If Cisco could do _____, then I could do _____." It was a great way to get conversations started. Another special thank you to those customers who visited us in Berlin!

The next stop for the Lab booth will be Cisco Live! in Las Vegas July 10-14. The booth in Vegas will feature new hands-on activities such as a giant mock-up board. If you're attending, please stop by theCisco Experience Lab, Booth#2046, say 'hi' and tell us about your Cisco experience!

Can't make it to Cisco Live!? If you have an experience you'd like Cisco to know about, please email us at [email protected].