Innovation & Quality: Listening to the Voice of the Customer

Innovation & Quality

Innovation and Quality is dedicated to the discussion of the best current practices to delver the best Customer Experience for businesses and organizations. REVENUE GROWTH ... from delighting your Customers CUSTOMER-VALUED INNOVATION ... to delight your Customers CUSTOMER-FOCUSED QUALITY ... to delight your Customers, and ENGAGING THE ENTIRE COMPANY... to delight your Customers

About Me

Name: Bill Robinson

Location: United States

Bill Robinson has more than thirty years of experience in business leadership and corporate performance improvement. For many years, Bill was Vice President of Innovation and Quality for Bell Labs. Other leadership positions Bill has held include Vice President of Quality and General Manager of EasyLink Services Corporation and President of Innovation and Quality Solutions. Bill is currently Distinguished Professor of Systems Engineering at Stevens Institute of Technology where he was previously the Director of Systems Engineering. http://www.linkedin.com/in/iqsolutions

Sunday, March 30, 2008

Listening to the Voice of the Customer

Some of the more common general techniques/methods used to understand what customer's want/need include:

Interviews
Surveys
Focus Groups
Kano Model Analysis
Quality Function Deployment (QFD)
RAD/JAD
Documented Requirements

Other, less common, techniques include:

Bayesian decision analysis
Uncertainty methods
Design of Experiments
Meta data analysis
Visualization Methods
Other statistical Methods

While all of these approaches have their strengths and weaknesses, they each will help give a view of what Customers' expect from products, services and support.

I believe that the best way to find out what Customers' really expect is simply to ask them and listen to what they tell you ... using qualitative information to understand their desires and then using quantitative data to understand how satisfied they they are in meeting those expectations.