The 'Voice of the customer' is a tool or process of gathering customer input about the proposed or existing services or products depending on the situation. If a company's success depends on knowing what the customer wants, then it should develop products and services based on customer feedback, and this should be done sooner rather than later.
Focus Groups
The focus groups may be thought of as special purpose vehicles or mechanisms to facilitate understand the voice of customer better, organize the gathered data, evaluate the evolved feedbacks and channelize them in concise fashion to the developers for deliberation and further action. In a way, focus groups can serve as live links between the customer and the development department.
Going a step further, we understand that there is a need for two focus groups with different missions. The first one focuses on exploring the collective needs of customers, develop and evaluate concepts for new product development as sensed or demanded by the voice of the customer. This group is generally called an explorative focus group. The other one is an experiential focus group, used to observe the usage of products in the market and study what the customers feel and experience about the products, learning their reasons and motivations to use the product.
How Do Focus Groups Conduct Voice Of the Customer Sessions?
The voice of customer sessions are conducted for long periods of 1 to 3 hours with typically 8 to 10 participants from the customer side. The objectives of the session are defined and clear in the minds of the participants. To begin with, it requires an experienced facilitator to organize the session from initiating to inviting everyone who is designated to participate.
The customers are identified from the group which has expressed interest and been invited. The agenda, presentation and procedures for the session are developed and honed by the facilitator as a precursor. The facilitator may decide to do a rehearsal of the session beforehand, in order to fine-tune the actual session.
The actual session may be commenced by a moderator who presents the idea, the purpose and the product description and a group of observers oversee the session. The overseers watch the session from a separate room without the knowledge of the participants and record the outcomes on video and audiotapes.
Member Participants Are Not Statistical Representatives of Customers
Owing to the small number of 'representative customers' at each session, the outcome of the session (the comments and feedback) can't be directly taken as the representation of the customers' voice as a whole. The session must be punctuated by careful selection of participants and increasing the number of sessions conducted does give validity to these sessions.
The results from these sessions can be generalized for acceptance after deliberating over against a comprehensive backdrop. The same theory applies to both explorative as well as experiential focus groups.
Six Sigma and Strategy
According to Six Sigma deployment procedures, separating organization strategies from the Six Sigma initiatives is inappropriate. For instance, if an organization aims to follow a low-cost supplier strategy, it would be suitable to concentrate on the erroneous business costs and pay heed to the voice of the customer.
On the other hand, if the organization aims to follow a market leadership and value creation strategy, it would be appropriate for the customers to guide Six Sigma efforts. Besides, who would understand value better than a customer would? Voice of the customer depends on the service or the product line.
Therefore, it is advisable to listen to the right customer voice as many organizations work for numerous sets of customers.
The Market/Product Matrix
When it comes to choosing a market/products, organizations ought to understand them first. This can be done by classifying all the factors that direct revenue in profit-seeking organizations i.e. Markets (customers) and the services and products they purchase.
A product line is groups of products that are similar define as per the customers' classification. Very often, these can be substituted in the product line and not any other product line. Market segments are group of customers with similar wants. If a given organization concentrates on the value, these segments would signify either different significance for the criteria or different value criteria.
Even though concentrating on a market segment and product line is impulsive for many marketers, today, many are also concentrating on the intersection of product lines and market segments. Both product lines and market segments lessen the difference between product lines and segments correspondingly, leaving only the internal variance as a source of interference, thus giving a clearer and more direct knowledge of the voice of the customer.
Choosing the Right Customers
Before choosing an appropriate market/product, one must first identify certain strategic criterion and then apply a uniform assessment of the criterion on all the markets/products that have been listed. A standard criteria is composed of market growth rate, market size, competitive intensity, market share, downstream service/product revenues and the margins within the market/product.
Firstly, get rid of all factors that denote selling a product or service to a certain segment is not appropriate. Subsequently, assess the remaining factors in conjunction with the strategic criterion. The most sought-after opportunities would be those that score more in terms of fulfilling the given criterion.
However, this does not mean the organization would stop working for the other markets/products. The organization continues to invest and avoid expending Six Sigma resources. At this stage, the organizational strategies and Six Sigma align and run parallel. Lastly, the organizations select appropriate voice/s of the customer to pay attention to and drive Six Sigma projects respectively.
Factors companies should listen to
Six Sigma employs customer satisfaction as the decisive voice-of-the-customer metric. There are times when managing this metric becomes difficult as satisfaction has a minuscule connection to the market performance or is not accountable for the interaction between price and quality
It is essential to get an appropriate voice of the customer to strategically apply Six Sigma. But, before that, it is important to understand how Six Sigma initiatives are coherent with the strategy. It is also essential to know which customer would provide an appropriate voice and what to take note of. With changing times, customer value is also increasing. Today, it is being taken into consideration due to its connection with the market performance and capability to understand dynamics of customer actions. It has now turned into a dominant metric for directing and identifying Six Sigma initiatives and projects.
Tony Jacowski has sinced written about articles on various topics from University, Six Sigma and Information Technology. Tony Jacowski is a quality analyst for The MBA Journal. Aveta Solution's Six Sigma Online offers online six sigma training and certification classes for lean six sigma, black belts, green belts, and yellow belts.. Tony Jacowski's top article generates over 90500 views. to your Favourites.