Voice of customer assignment

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CUSTOMER FOCUS IN THE BALDRIGE CRITERIA, ISO 9000, AND SIX SIGMA

Category 3 of the 2009–10 Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award Criteria for Performance Excellence (available in the Baldrige Materials folder on the Premium website) is titled Customer Focus. Item 3.1, Customer Engagement, examines an organization’s processes for determining product offerings and mechanisms to support customers’ use of products, and how an organization builds a customer-focused culture. The criteria ask how an organization identifies and innovates its product offerings to meet customer needs and how it determines key means of customer support and customer support requirements. The item also asks how an organization creates a customer-focused culture that contributes to customer engagement and builds and manages customer relationships. Finally, the item asks how an organization improves its customer-focused approaches so that it can keep current with changing business needs and directions. Continuous improvement of business processes is a core concept of the Baldrige criteria.

Item 3.2, Voice of the Customer, examines an organization’s processes for listening to customers and acquiring satisfaction and dissatisfaction information, and using this information to improve marketplace success. It addresses how organizations listen to customers to obtain actionable feedback, manage complaints and service recovery processes, determine customer satisfaction and engagement and compare results with competitors and industry benchmarks, and measure customer dissatisfaction for use in improvement.

Customer focus is a key requirement of ISO 9000:2000. For example, in the Management Responsibility section, one requirement is “Top management shall ensure that customer requirements are determined and are met with the aim of enhancing customer satisfaction.” This puts the responsibility for customer focus on senior leadership. In the Product Realization section, the standards require that the organization determine customer requirements, including delivery and post-delivery activities, and any requirements not stated by the customer but necessary for specified or intended use. In addition, the organization must establish procedures for communicating with customers about product information and other inquiries, and for obtaining feedback, including complaints. In the Measurement, Analysis, and Improvement sections, the standards require that the organization monitor customer perceptions as to whether the organization has met customer requirements; that is, customer satisfaction. Note that even though some basic customer-focused processes are required, the scope is not as broad as in Baldrige.

Customers are sometimes a “hidden” part of Six Sigma efforts, because the focus tends to be on the improvement projects and measurement issues. However, a focus on the customer is vital at every stage of Six Sigma projects. For instance, product design (and design of associated manufacturing or service delivery processes) will be far more successful if the “voice of the customer,” is included. A fundamental aspect of Six Sigma methodology is identification of critical to quality (CTQ) characteristics that are vital to customer satisfaction.

During the process of producing a product or service, it is important to gather information needed by internal customers for process control activities to ensure that the product is meeting the CTQs. If the CTQs are not being met, then the organization needs to develop a better measurement and control system. 69 Often, internal data that can improve control processes—such as whether materials arrived 226227on time, how often an accounting report had incorrect data, or how many employees were absent from work—are kept in departmental records, where they are difficult to access. The solution may require a Six Sigma study to determine the types of data and information that are needed to provide necessary monitoring and control, and how the information gap (if one exists) can be closed.

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Finally, at the delivery stage, customer satisfaction measures can provide clear information about the success of Six Sigma efforts. In fact, many common Six Sigma projects revolve around developing appropriate customer satisfaction measurement processes, as well as trying to improve the design and delivery of CTQs identified through voice of the customer processes.

SUMMARY OF KEY POINTS AND TERMINOLOGY

The Premium website for this chapter provides a summary of key concepts and terminology introduced in this chapter.

BONUS MATERIALS

Quality in Practice: Understanding the Voice of the Customer at LaRosa’s Pizzerias 70

“All business is the same, it just looks different” is a favorite quote of T. D. Hughes, CEO of LaRosa’s, Inc. LaRosa’s is a privately held chain of neighborhood pizzerias with 54 locations in Cincinnati, Ohio, northern Kentucky, and southeast Indiana, that offers full-service dine-in, carryout, and home delivery. LaRosa’s competes against such national chains as Pizza Hut, Papa John’s, Uno’s, and other local restaurants, yet holds a 45 to 50 percent share in its market area. LaRosa’s has been a leader among local businesses in adopting and promoting total quality principles. Hughes’ quote provides a foundation for learning from other organizations and adopting high-performance practices that have proven successful, no matter what business they come from. One of these is the Voice of the Customer process.

In 1997, as part of a new strategic planning process, LaRosa’s identified growth as a key strategic goal. Because the local market was essentially saturated, however, the executive management team worked on strategies for growing the company for three years and produced no tangible results. One of the reasons for the impasse was the lack of sound, factual data. The executive management team had developed three growth strategies, but could not agree on which one to follow because of a lack of a fact-based foundation for the decision.

In 2000, a project team was formed to tackle this issue, and was given complete latitude to make any recommendation for an Italian/pizzeria concept based on customer needs and expectations. The team consisted of the marketing director (team leader), two executive vice presidents, the director of operations, two franchise owners, an external strategic business partner, and the CEO, who was the team sponsor. The key tool that successfully led to an understanding of their customers and to a new and innovative restaurant design was Voice of the Customer (VOC). VOC is a structured methodology for listening to customers that is promoted by the Center for Quality of Management (CQM), an industrial consortium based in Boston ( http://www.cqm.org ). The basis for VOC is asking customers to express their needs and expectations through their experiences. LaRosa’s completed 16 in-depth, one-on-one interviews with current and potential customers both inside and outside of their current market area to provide examples of dining incidents these individuals had experienced, seeking “the good, the bad, and the ugly.” Here are some responses from customers of current competitors and potential competitors in other markets.

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