Voice of the customer
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Voice of the Customer (VOC) is a term used in business to describe the process of capturing a customer's requirements. Specifically, the Voice of the Customer is a market research technique that produces a detailed set of customer wants and needs, organized into a hierarchical structure, and then prioritized in terms of relative importance and satisfaction with current alternatives. Voice of the Customer studies typically consist of both qualitative and quantitative research steps. They are generally conducted at the start of any new product, process, or service design initiative in order to better understand the customer’s wants and needs, and as the key input for new product definition, Quality Function Deployment (QFD), and the setting of detailed design specifications.
Much has been written about this process, and there are many possible ways to gather the information – focus groups, individual interviews, contextual inquiry, ethnographic techniques, etc. But all involve a series of structured in-depth interviews, which focus on the customers’ experiences with current products or alternatives within the category under consideration. Needs statements are then extracted, organized into a more usable hierarchy, and then prioritized by the customers.
It is critical that the product development core team own and be highly involved in this process. They must be the ones who take the lead in defining the topic, designing the sample (i.e. the types of customers to include), generating the questions for the discussion guide, either conducting or observing and analyzing the interviews, and extracting and processing the needs statements.
A good Voice of the Customer study provides:
- 1) A detailed understanding of the customer’s requirements
- 2) A common language for the team going forward
- 3) Key input for the setting of appropriate design specifications for the new product or service
- 4) A highly useful springboard for product innovation.
References
Burchill, Gary and Brodie, Christina Hepner, (1997). Voices into Choices. Madison, WI: Joiner Publications. (A complete “how-to” guide of the process developed at the Center for Quality Management in the early 1990’s.)
Griffin, Abbie and Hauser, John, (1993). The Voice of the Customer. Marketing Science, 12(1): 1-27 (Winter). (The first truly empirical study of Voice of the Customer, the goal of which was to identify best practices.)
Katz, Gerald, (2001). The “One Right Way” to Gather the Voice of the Customer. PDMA Visions, 25(2) (October) (Examines all of the various trade-offs in how to go about gathering Voice of the Customer information, with the conclusion that there is no “one right way”.)
Katz, Gerald M., (2004). The Voice of the Customer. The PDMA Toolbook 2 for New Product Development, John Wiley & Sons. (A complete step-by-step explanation of how to gather a complete and rigorous Voice of the Customer.)
McQuarrie, Edward F., (1998). Customer Visits. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. (A comprehensive description of this most common way of gathering customer wants and needs.)
Ulwick, Anthony, (2002). Turn Customer Input into Innovation. Harvard Business Review, 80(1) (January). (A paper that describes the Voice of the Customer process in more managerial language, rather than product developer or market researcher language).
Common Problems Encountered with Voice of the Customer Research
Although the concept of Voice of the Customer may seem straightforward, it is actually quite complex. Surveys, focus groups, and interview processes are not easy to set up in a manner that gathers unbiased data. People often give the answer that they believe the interviewer desires to hear, as opposed to their actual opinion. This leads to biased results that often do not correlate well with the customer's actual purchases.
Voice of the Customer tools may also be reactive in nature. Many companies gather reactive VOC data in the form of complaint logs or databases. In some cases, this data is used by management to understand their customers better and to develop continuous improvement programs to address these customer needs. The VOC data can be proactive if it is then married with sales forecasting. This affords opportunities to systematically review past process improvements to ensure "they stuck," thus avoiding recreating the unfavorable customer experience again (going around the vicious loop).
Customers often do not know, or can not communicate effectively, their actual needs and requirements. This is one of the major challenges facing businesses today. Because of this, businesses need to continue to find more creative methods of understanding customer requirements.
Tools such as "Critical to Quality" trees, and "Kano" models can help businesses to uncover the specific requirements, and determine their relative importance to the customer.
