Voice of the Customer

Quick reference

• 00:05 Hi, I'm Ray Sheen.
• 00:06 Now we've already discussed that one of the best practices for
• 00:09 process improvement is customer focus.
• 00:12 Let's take a look now at the voice of the customer.
• 00:16 I'll start by clarifying who is a customer.
• 00:19 Customers are the people or
• 00:20 organizations which receive all or a portion of the process output.
• 00:25 We often segment customers into internal and external customers.
• 00:28 External customers are those who purchase or use the process or
• 00:32 result and are not a member of your organization or company.
• 00:35 They are external to the management control of your operation.
• 00:39 For example, the customer service call center process has external customers,
• 00:43 those individuals calling in for service.
• 00:46 Internal customers are those who use all or a portion of the process output but
• 00:50 they are members of your company or organization.
• 00:53 Normally they are taking the results of your process and further modifying or
• 00:57 using it in order to ultimately get to a customer facing process.
• 01:01 An example would be the new hire onboarding process.
• 01:04 The internal customer is the new hire and their manager.
• 01:07 Once they've been successfully onboarded they can begin to work on the other
• 01:11 business processes.
• 01:13 It's rather common for a process to have both internal and external customers.
• 01:17 So for instance, your organization's payroll process
• 01:20 has internal customers who are the employees receiving paychecks.
• 01:24 And external customers who are the banks processing the checks and
• 01:28 the government processing the payroll taxes.
• 01:31 Interactions with customers can help us to identify customer needs,
• 01:35 which is just an officious sounding way of describing what they want to do or
• 01:39 able to do with the process output.
• 01:42 The needs are often transformed into process requirements in order to
• 01:46 give the process manager and operator the ability to manage the process so
• 01:51 that it's likely to meet the customer's needs.
• 01:53 For instance, your customers may have a need for a fast delivery.
• 01:57 This translates into a process requirement of 24 hours for expedited shipping.
• 02:02 In order to fully understand the voice of the customer, you need to understand
• 02:06 all the attributes of value that are associated with your process.
• 02:10 We have a tendency to lock in on just one or two, but
• 02:13 most processes have many attributes of value.
• 02:16 The reason this is so important is that if you're hitting the mark on value
• 02:19 in four areas but missing it in the fifth,
• 02:21 well it's in that fifth area that the customer will focus upon.
• 02:25 So ask your customer about what they value in each of these areas.
• 02:30 The first is cost, but keep in mind it is the customer's cost that counts.
• 02:35 The customer doesn't care about your internal costs,
• 02:37 they care about their costs.
• 02:39 So it is the total cost to procure the results or maintain the results.
• 02:44 When considering delivery, the key from the customer's perspective is whether or
• 02:47 not the results are available when they would like them to be available.
• 02:51 This includes predictability.
• 02:53 If you tell the customer that they will get the results next Tuesday morning,
• 02:57 then deliver it on Tuesday morning.
• 02:58 Which also leads to questions like response time and
• 03:02 cycle time to resolve an issue or to respond to a request.
• 03:05 Speed is good and predictability with it is even better.
• 03:09 Next is performance.
• 03:11 Depending upon your process your customer may not even
• 03:14 give you any needs in this category because they are assumed.
• 03:18 If the customer is ordering a car, they expect it to have an engine and
• 03:21 wheels and seats.
• 03:23 Those define the product category and
• 03:25 the absence of those fundamentally changes the product.
• 03:28 But there are many products with performance attributes such as accuracy,
• 03:32 fit for use, and aesthetics, meaning I wanna red car.
• 03:36 Quality is a first cousin to performance because the quality attribute
• 03:40 normally deals with the quality or
• 03:42 the process results as it applies to one of the performance attributes.
• 03:46 However, quality often has the added aspect of initial quality and
• 03:50 long term quality, often referred to as reliability and durability.
• 03:55 Brand is more likely to be an attribute associated with external customers.
• 03:58 It has been gaining importance as many customers equate a brand with a promise
• 04:02 for quality, performance, aesthetics, affinity or even status.
• 04:07 The last category is one that many marketers say
• 04:10 has exploded during the past ten years, but I think it's been there all along.
• 04:15 Customers want to feel special, and the relationship makes them feel special.
• 04:19 In today's business environment, technology has expanded the reach of
• 04:22 an organization or process to become unique or customized.
• 04:27 The customization is an element of the relationship, and
• 04:30 you can establish trust, familiarity, and ease of doing business through that.
• 04:36 So, how do you gather the voice of the customer?
• 04:39 Wait for it.
• 04:40 You communicate with them.
• 04:42 Remember, this is an existing process.
• 04:44 So we can easily find out who is using the process results.
• 04:48 Now there are many techniques for communicating and let's look at a few.
• 04:51 Surveys are a designed set of questions that are sent to your existing and
• 04:55 prospective customers.
• 04:56 It's relatively low cost but normally has a low return rate.
• 05:00 Interviews are a great way of getting in depth, one-on-one communication.
• 05:04 The interviewer can ask follow up questions for clarity and understanding.
• 05:08 But this can be an expensive and time consuming depending upon the number and
• 05:12 location of your customers.
• 05:15 Focus groups can provide almost as much in depth information as interviews and
• 05:19 can reach many more customers, but they are more difficult to set up and schedule.
• 05:24 Don't overlook the obvious communication path which is a suggestion from current
• 05:28 customers.
• 05:29 They will often provide both formal and
• 05:31 informal suggestions provided there's a venue or forum where they can engage.
• 05:36 Finally, there's direct observation of the customer using the product or service or
• 05:40 watching how they interact with the process or a step in the process.
• 05:44 While this is usually not verbal communication,
• 05:46 there's often a great deal of feedback available just by watching.
• 05:50 Generally speaking this technique works better with internal customers
• 05:54 rather than external customers.
• 05:56 It's easier to work out the logistics.
• 06:00 Lean Six Sigma doesn't care how you communicate with your customers, so
• 06:04 use a combination of the techniques.
• 06:06 The important point is that you interact and communicate, so
• 06:09 that you know what the customer needs from their view point and
• 06:13 you don't assume that you understand it.

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