Treats from our customer survey

In May, we sent out a customer survey to our newsletter subscribers. The result was like throwing bread to ducks. We don't know why or how, but nearly 2000 people responded to an overly long form filled with all sorts of silly questions, which is a sample size big enough to predict the next presidential election.

Just like every other company, we're interested in what's going on in our customers' heads. Naturally, this is because we want more money, and the only honest way to get more money is to serve customers better and bring better products to the market. With extra cash, we can then buy big gold watches, fast cars, and build a Death Star. Everyone wins.

From the extensive survey, you get all sorts of interesting stats that you can fiddle with just for the fun of it. The survey results have been eyeballed, spun around in Excel, and even sicced on ChatGPT. Here's all the publishable info. The rest we've printed on receipt paper, placed inside a candle-formed pentagram, and summoned in a mystical Cthulhu calling ritual.

Valco's customers

The international mix of respondents was exactly what our own imagination and Valco's customer statistics show. About 68% of customers are from Finland, 25% from Germany, and the rest are scattered across Europe like sardines in the open sea. A couple of percent of respondents were from outside the EU.

What's more interesting, however, is what our customers are like. Even though just today on LinkedIn I saw someone say Valco is a cheap and lousy Varusteleka knock-off, the truth is we've been doing this gig in our own way without overthinking it.

The end result seems to be that our customers look just like us entrepreneurs. In other words, they're original, unique, and downright brilliant individuals.

We asked what kind of environment our customers live in, and while the distribution was quite even, it's a bit different from where people statistically reside. You're more likely to find a Valco customer in a small town than in a big metropolis. Probably because in a small town, it's more important to make the neighbors jealous with new headphones.

While everyone else seems to be chasing the selfie-snapping youth on Instagram, our customers are a more mature bunch. The male demographic is still overrepresented (80%), but since last year, the number of female customers has pleasantly increased. We're aiming not to be just a dude brand. We're happy to take money from women and all non-binary folks too.

Statistically speaking, the average Valco customer is a guy in his fifties living in Oulu or Tampere, Finland. In Germany, somewhere like Leipzig or Dortmund. We didn't ask, but they probably enjoy metal music, beer, and sausages. Of course, the absolute number of customers from any one place depends on how big the place is. Looking at the German states, our customers are pretty evenly spread across the country.

I have to say, though, that our customer age range is impressively even, but you can't turn this into a trendy youth brand, no matter how creative your imagination is. Which is good, because young people don't have money anyway. My own kid, almost twenty, is always just asking for money.

Customer Preferences

We also asked customers about their headphone usage and preferences. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the majority of customers (94%) primarily use their headphones for listening to music. For Valco customers, sound quality is by far the most important reason to choose headphones (and that's why you're Valco customers).

Noise-cancelling is also an important feature in headphones—one of the most popular uses seems to be filtering out external noise with it.

When almost 20% of customers admit to using their headphones for watching weird and slightly embarrassing porn, we might need to invent a quick button for future models that hides the porn and brings up an Excel spreadsheet instead. This could boost demand for headphones in the workplace.

Feedback

Right off the bat, I have to admit that the feedback has gotten worse since the 2022 survey. So, we haven't exactly been heading in the right direction.

No need to rush off to Bauhaus for some rope just yet. Our website is four-star, and the general satisfaction with the company (on a scale of 1-10) is 9.35. The NPS (Net Promoter Score) can also be calculated from the responses, and it's 80. Many companies would do anything to see numbers like these, but we're a bit like Käärijä, who didn't win Eurovision: hellishly disappointed because we know we were better.

In hindsight, we can now say that the extended delivery times have definitely wiped the smiles off our customers' faces and lowered our performance. There are also areas for improvement in our online store's functionality and customer service, as our customers have clearly pointed out.

Luckily, there's light at the end of the tunnel: the delivery issues have been sorted out, at least for now, and we've got more VMK25 headphones in stock than sausages at Lidl. From here on out, our goal is to have products available exactly when we promise.

We've taken the online store feedback seriously, and a complete overhaul is already in the works. We're aiming to have a more user-friendly, snazzier, better-functioning, and above all, sexier store ready by summer.

Lots of ideas

Henry Ford once said that if he had asked customers what they wanted, the answer would have been "faster horses." Or at least someone put those words in Henry's mouth. Companies often think that customers don't know what they want. Or they come up with some 'revolutionary' thing and then market it so that everyone just has to have one.

This time we decided to do things differently and ask you directly what you want. We got a lot of great ideas for improving our marketing. Of course, a big chunk of the ideas were a bit... let's say, works in progress. But overall, we got fantastic feedback considering the price.

We especially appreciate the feedback we've received to improve our product range. We got over 1000 responses on how to enhance our current products and loads of product ideas. Interestingly, almost all the product ideas were things we had already considered, but now we have a much clearer picture of what people actually want.

We've already started rearranging our product development to better meet your needs, and we've bumped up the queue for products that are clearly in demand.

We're planning to take this even further, and in the future, we'll be asking for customer opinions on product appearance (and, where possible, features too). For example, we're currently working on so-called hi-fi headphones. They're still on the drawing board, so we can definitely put different concepts out there for customers to evaluate and comment on. It's worth keeping an eye on Valco's newsletter.