3

Gather Metrics for Success (Our Customer’s Perspective)

In this chapter, we will define and gather the Voice of the Customer (VOC), starting with open-ended questions. The scope needs to be narrow since open-ended inputs may diverge and take us away from our intended purpose. These questions will provide more definition about our product and how our company is perceived. Later, we will complement the information with the close-ended Kano questions.

3.1   Prepare for the Customer Interview

Prior to the customer interview, our fictitious companies have had several conversations. These talks were done ahead of time before we participated on the data gathering of the VOC. These conversations are normally made by our commercial team mainly from the sales or marketing department. The intent is to create an atmosphere of collaboration and a two-way communication between the customer and our team. Qualitative research of our client is best done in person, face-to-face, in their offices, or in their facilities. Anticipate about 1–2 hours to conduct the interviews. During that visit, a plant or facility tour could be arranged to further understand how the product is being used during the manufacturing process. After all, it is our product in the factory they are using.

In preparation for the customer interview, we need to determine ahead of time how many of our employees will be going to the visit. Some of the key contributors would include a designated facilitator (selected by the core team), a person from manufacturing, sales, and marketing. You may consider the original eight that participated in the brainstorming and Kano exercise. In addition, you may want to add two or three employees, but take care not to make such a large group that it might be intimidating to the customer, especially if they have a smaller group.

Next, define which method to gather the VOC. You can gather customer information using one-on-one interviews or focus groups. Which option is chosen will mainly be a personal choice suggested either by our team or by the customer. An alternative option would be to use both methods. The one-on-one interviews use the Kano questions and the focus group uses the open-ended queries. A third possibility would be to do both open- and close-ended questionnaires in a focus group to encourage dialog and freely exchange ideas in an orderly manner.

The location of the interview should be at the customer’s site. It can be at their factory, but it needs to be in an area that is removed from day-to-day activities. The best results occur when the customer is completely immersed and not distracted during these sessions. The number of client team members involved should be as many as they are willing to afford. Similar to the rule of thumb we used earlier, a manageable team is between 7 and 12 people. If the customer provides more people, then that clearly speaks to the level of their commitment and your team did an outstanding job convincing them of the importance of such a visit.

3.1.1   How Do You Define Success?

Success is defined from the customer’s perspective regarding our product. The prework needed to define the open-ended questions shouldn’t be as arduous as the close-ended ones. We only need to define key topics and let the customer fill in the details. In the previous chapter, those questionnaires took longer since it was our perception of the customer. We needed to probe with many questions to focus on our topic.

A key question to ask the customer is, what did they find important about using our product? Depending on who you ask different viewpoints will be given. Capturing verbatim what the customer values is imperative. They may reply with a combination of needs and wants. Let’s be clear, needs are attributes or conditions that must be met. These conditions help make a basic quality product or to comply with government or industry regulations. Wants, on the other hand, are less authoritative; these are metrics or conditions that are nice to have. As we have done before when we introduce a concept, an illustration would help bring a different perspective to the topic. Table 3.1 provides examples of a few needs and wants.

TABLE 3.1
List of Needs and Wants

Needs	Wants
All your nonconformance issues should use SCAR, Supplier Corrective Action Request	The coating can be applied at the temperature range of −15°F to 105°F
Color match is ≤0.8 delta Ecmc	The heavier product should be packed first on the truck to reduce damage
Particle size 2 ± 0.1 mils	Particle size 2 ± 0.001 mils
1 or 2 peels or cracks per 100 linear ft	Your coating should account for 10% of our unscheduled downtime
Gloss is 85% at 60°	I would like to have a product that has low odor

Returning to our case study example of Tubing Experts, let’s learn what type of questions we will prepare to ask our client. As we gather the core team of eight participants, we brainstormed a few ideas and jotted down on a whiteboard a few open-ended topics.

As seen in Figure 3.1, the list is not too long. We want to keep the topics short and focused. We will present each question to the customer one at a time, and then they will provide multiple answers for each one. After this dialog is completed, using the focus group, we will then wrap up the conversation with one last request. If you could select the ultimate metric of success, which of these replies will you choose?

FIGURE 3.1
Brainstorming a few open-ended topics to ask our customer.

Depending on the dynamics of the customer team, you may encounter a situation which a single metric becomes so dominant that everyone agrees on it. Consider that a blessing since now you have the key metric that the customer uses to define success. If this ideal situation does not present itself at your customer’s meeting, you may want to perform a multi-vote as discussed in Chapter 2 for selecting top attributes. As a suggestion, the selected facilitator should guide the customer team to choose the topic with the most votes.

3.2   Conduct the Interview

We now have the entire framework to gather the open- and close-ended questions from our customer. At this point, all preparations for the appropriate location have been selected. The format for the questionnaires will be done with both one-on-one interviews and focus group style. For many weeks, our team has been preparing for this moment. It’s showtime!

Finally, the day has arrived and our team from Liquid Paint Specialists arrives at the Tubing Experts headquarters. They are located near their largest manufacturing plant which makes the most use of the product we supply. Sitting in the conference room, we noticed that their team comprises of eight people; that is an equal match to the number of people we brought from our company. This total of 16 is slightly more than the suggested 12 participants, making the coordination a little bit more challenging.

After the preliminary handshakes and introductions, we begin to share our agenda on how we plan to conduct the VOC data gathering. As previously scheduled, we visit the manufacturing plant. The plant tour satisfies two objectives. First, it gives us a direct view on how the product is being applied at the facility which helps us understand any nuances of its uses and applications. Second, and more importantly, it is a great icebreaker. Getting to know your customer in person establishes a bond that transcends any type of phone call or video conferencing.

3.2.1   Gather the VOC with Open-Ended Questions

After the conclusion of the tour, we will start to gather the VOC, beginning with the three open-ended questions in a focus group style. They gave us the following replies as we went around the table listening to each of the contributors. Table 3.2, 3.3 and 3.4 show the list of open-ended questions with customer’s responses.

TABLE 3.2
First Open-Ended Question with Customer’s Responses

How Do You Measure Success?

No recordable safety incidents

Number of tubes we made today, our mileage for the day

The appearance of the coated surface looks good

Product is coated evenly at the desired thickness

TABLE 3.3
Second Open-Ended Question with Customer’s Responses

How Does Your Customer Measure Success?

Our orders arrive on time and in full

They partner with us to make new products

Satisfaction and praises from the level of quality we provide to them

TABLE 3.4
Third Open-Ended Question with Customer’s Responses

Do You Have Any New Product Launches Which We Can Help You with?

Yes, we have a new multiuse display. Our end user would like to use our product as a hands-on training for display structures

After all the answers were collected, which took about 20 minutes, the customer felt comfortable with the inquiries and how the dialog pace was going. Into the final stretch of questions, we asked for one last request: which response will you rate as the ultimate metric of success? As the customer team huddles to discuss among themselves which one will be the most impactful, our team overhears the word safety and customer satisfaction being tossed about. Finally, after a few moments, the Tubing Expert team emerges with the answer of mileage. We asked, why did mileage make it to the top of the list? The reply was that the people at the factory floor are given a bonus based on how many miles of quality tubes were produced on a given day under safe conditions. It was the singling out of mileage that surprised us. We would have never thought that mileage was such an impactful metric of success. Such is the importance of having a customer visit.

We have the ultimate metric. We now ask our customer for a couple more that have a medium impact. The Tubing Experts team provided us with their top three choices:

• Our orders arrive on time and in full.

• Appearance.

• Even coating thickness.

This concludes the gathering of the open-ended inquiries from our client. Next, we will gather the close-ended questions to complete the VOC.

3.2.2   Gather the VOC with Close-Ended Kano Questions

We finished collecting the open-ended replies and learned that the key metric for success is mileage. We will now conduct the interviews with the close-ended Kano questions. Recall that we, Liquid Paint Specialist, used the highest voted attributes, and we converted these into questions to know if that product attribute or feature “was addressed” or “was not addressed.” The results from our customer interview are presented on Table 3.5. Depending on how the customer’s paired responses are, we can convert these into one of the three Kano categories: Basic Needs, Satisfiers, and Delighters! Please refer to Figure 2.13 in Chapter 2 to see how these Kano categories are determined using the criteria selection matrix.

TABLE 3.5
Close-Ended Kano Questions with Responses

Attributes	Was Addressed	Answer	Not Addressed	Answer	Kano Category
Product development	How would you feel if we jointly develop a new product?	Good	How would you feel if we don’t jointly develop a new product?	Typical	Delighter!
	How would you feel if we develop a leading-edge product for you?	Good	How would you feel if we don’t develop a leading-edge product?	Not good	Satisfier
	How would you feel if our product would increase your current rating on consumer reviews?	Good	How would you feel if our product would reduce your current rating on consumer reviews?	Not good	Satisfier
Product consistency	How do you feel if our product is within specs?	Neutral	How do you feel if our product is not in spec?	Not good	Basic Need
	How do you feel if our product increase your productivity?	Good	How do you feel if our product does not increase your productivity?	Typical	Delighter!
Delivery (on time)	How would you feel if your shipment arrived when you want it?	Neutral	How would you feel if your shipment arrived other than the time when you want it?	Not good	Basic Need
Samples	How would you feel if your supplier has a good product sample process?	Neutral	How would you feel if your supplier has a bad product sample process?	Not good	Basic Need

We have reached the end of the interviewing process and the gathering of the VOC. After all the pleasantries were exchanged with Tubing Experts, we left their offices after several hours. While our team was driving back to the airport, we debriefed what we had learned. The number one topic that kept shaking our head was the powerful and simple metric of success. Mileage.

3.3   Combine and Quantify the VOCs

The raw data has been collected and it needs to be converted into meaningful information that will help us make decisions. This process involves distilling the open- and close-ended replies to the finer few which will become the first building blocks of House of Quality 1 (HOQ1). Figure 3.2 shows a partial view of the process map that will help shape HOQ1. The last step shown in the diagram, using the VOCs in HOQ1, will be described in more detail in Chapter 5. In this section, we will finish with a list of prioritized VOCs.

FIGURE 3.2
Organize the VOC from open- and closed-end questions.

We begin by using the most important open-ended response, mileage, and will give it a high rating of 9, using a three-leveled skewed rating scale of 9, 3, and 1. This rating will be used again when we complete HOQ1. Tubing Experts indicated during the open-ended replies that these three “our orders arrive on time and in full,” “appearance,” and “even coating thickness,” were given a medium rating. We will move these three forward with a rating of 3.

Switching to the close-ended Kano questions, we will give a rating priority from highest to lowest depending on the Kano criteria. This 9-, 3-, 1- tilted scale makes Delighters! more important with a value of 9, thus making Satisfiers equal to 3 and Basic Needs 1. These results are summarized in Table 3.6. In addition, we added a column on the far right on the table to know if each line item has a direct relationship to product performance. This will help us know how to sort out these valuable nuggets of information given to us by our customer.

TABLE 3.6
Open- and Close-Ended Kano Questions Ratings Summary

Main Attributes	Attributes/Sub-attributes	Kano Category	Rating	Related to Product Performance
–	No recordable safety incidents	–	–	No
–	Mileage made today	–	9	Yes
–	Our orders arrive on time and in full	–	3	No
–	Appearance	–	3	Yes
–	Even coating thickness	–	3	Yes
Product development	Jointly develop a new product	Delighter!	9	No
	Develop a leading-edge product for you	Satisfier	3	No
	Our product would increase your current rating on consumer reviews	Satisfier	3	No
Product consistency	Product is within specs	Basic Need	1	Yes
	Our product improves your productivity	Delighter!	9	Yes
Delivery (on time)	Shipment arrived when you want it	Basic Need	1	No
Samples	Good product sample process	Basic Need	1	No

After reviewing the results from the Tubing Experts interviews and focus group discussions, the VOC that are not directly related to the product performance can be used to enhance the relationship between our company and our customer. Not all of these are going to be used on HOQ1, only those properties that are directly related to product performance. We will extract those that will be carried forward to HOQ1 as shown in Table 3.7.

TABLE 3.7
VOCs that Will Be Carried Forward to HOQ1

Attributes/Sub-attributes	Kano Category	Rating	Related to Product Performance
Mileage made today	–	9	Yes
Appearance	–	3	Yes
Even coating thickness	–	3	Yes
Product is within specs	Basic Need	1	Yes
Our product improves your productivity	Delighter!	9	Yes

We learned many facets from our customer through the structured and unstructured formats of our questions and interviews. This process provided us a glimpse from their perspective to know how to improve our product and product offerings that go beyond product performance. We are now positioned to move forward top five VOCs items. In Chapter 5, these VOCs will be used as the first building blocks to construct HOQ1.