The Voice of the Customer
What is the Voice of the Customer!

The Voice of the Customer (VOC) is about understanding the customers' needs. Vital information from the customer can be used for many different improvement activities. The primary objective for collecting the VOC is to provide improved products and/or services. The basic premise for using the customer's voice, is to define expectations and needs. Needs that they may not even know they have and expectations that exceed their wildest dreams.

Both time and money can be saved by carefully listening to what a customer says. Eighty percent of new products fail in the market place because no one paid attention to this most critical aspect - - the customer. For that reason, collecting the VOC is the first thing an organization should embark on when entering the market with a new product or service, or in the redesign of an existing product or service.  We adhere to the Kano Model to understand customer needs and customer satisfaction.

A Voice of the Customer (VOC) process is customer-centered and clarifies the “fuzzy front end” of the product and/or service development process. It comes before the detailed design and implementation process. It includes a data collection and scrubbing methodology for analyzing customer feedback. It assumes that the customers' needs should drive the product and or service development cycle.

We facilitate Voice of the Customer (VOC) customer focus groups that allow your customers to give their input on their true needs for a product and/or service.  We then take that information and create product specifications and requirements using Quality Function Deployment (QFD) methodology. 

Our methodology is a comprehensive language processing system, designed to identify the "Voice of the Customer" at its most basic level.  One of the keys to getting good customer data is to insure that the customer is giving you his or her true needs, and not solutions to your product or service challenges.  Our system involves the following steps.

Step 1. - Interviewing.  Each customer is interviewed one-on-one in in-depth  sessions.  Interviews are conducted with communication techniques guaranteed to gather information that is unbiased and clear.  We insure that the information is not generalized, deleted or distorted.  All interviews are tape recorded and/or video taped to insure accuracy and are then transcribed verbatim.

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Step 1. - Conduct a Team Driven Customer Focus Group.  Customer focus groups can save time and money. Up to ten customers can participate in a focus group that is lead by a product/and or service development team along with a skilled facilitator.  Once customer feedback has been collected the process of analyzing the data remains the same.

Step 2. - Language Processing.  The transcripts are analyzed to extract key concepts and phrases. Quality characteristics from phrases and concepts are determined from the data.  The data are then formally classified.

Step 3. - Theme Analysis. Once the data has been documented, additional analysis is conducted to identify and group re-occurring themes.

Step 4.  - Determining Importance Ratings. Focus groups or paper and pencil surveys are then conducted with customers.  Customers rate the importance of their needs using a 100 point scale to insure a robust ratio analysis of the data collected.  Customers also rate the competition on how well they are meeting the identified needs.

Step 5. - Begin The Quality Function Deployment (QFD) Process.  The organization is now ready to take the true needs of their customers and begin the process of identifying how they will meet those needs in the products and services they provide. 

Contact us on how we can help you to implement a Voice of the Customer process for your organization!

 

Voice of the Customer White Papers

Are You Hearing Voices?

Unleashing the Power of the Voice of the Customer

What's Preventing You From Putting the Voice of the Customer to Work?

Case Analysis: Voice of the Customer

Oracle: Using the Voice of the Customer