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Voice of the Customer
New products begin – and end – with customer value. When the voice of the customer is heard and understood it creates a clear picture not only of explicit customer needs – but of latent needs, as well. Only after the expressed and latent needs are fully mined, do developers have their best chance of identifying requirements and features that provide value at product launch. In this section, you will find practitioner insights, interviews and expert views on such topics as conducting customer visits; prioritizing requirements and validating them through appropriate measures; using the Web to interact with customers; and using advanced prototyping tools to help identify the best combinations of features.
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Managing Customer Requirements in Volatile Environments: How Flexible Product Development Can Reduce the Cost of Change
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Gaining Customer Insight: Practitioners and Experts Share Their Methods for Discovering Customer Needs
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Insights from General Motors: Balancing VOC with Engineering Creativity and Business Needs
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Applying Virtual Customer Methods: VOC Insights from M.I.T.
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Using Ethnography to Understand Customer Needs: Insights from Microsoft
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Using Voice of the Customer to Link Technology to Market Opportunity
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Evolutionary VOC Solutions to Optimize Package Design at Proctor & Gamble
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Using Complementary VOC Methodologies at HP
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Voices to Solutions
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Using VOC to Link Technology to Market Opportunity
Documents
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Managing Customer Requirements in Volatile Environments: How Flexible Product Development Can Reduce the Cost of Change
Presentations—In fast-paced, competitive markets product requirements seem like a moving target. How can you and your team keep up? While freezing requirements may seem like a good idea, studies demonstrate that product development teams can rarely afford to freeze requirements before any development work begins. The challenge is accommodating change without wreaking havoc on the schedule and budget. In this audio session, Preston Smith presents an approach to Flexible Development that describes how to use the concept of product vision to guide design decisions and feature tradeoffs; how to use front-loaded prototyping to elicit feedback from customers and other stakeholders while the cost of change is low; how to engage both engineering and marketing professionals in customer research activities; how to create leading indicators for requirements change; how to find and involve lead users who will reveal untapped opportunities.
(34 pages) -
Gaining Customer Insight: Practitioners and Experts Share Their Methods for Discovering Customer Needs
Event Summaries—is overview of an August 2007 conference summarizes a range of viewpoints about how to gain and incorporate insights from customers. Speakers from such firms as Intel, Boston Scientific, Steelcase, Microsoft, Sun Microsystems and others, discussed their experience with a range of customer data-gathering methods from ethnography, to focus groups, to customer design experimentation and value opportunity charts. Experts and key note speakers offered recommendations on how best to translate customer data into features that help product and service offerings succeed in the marketplace.
(6 pages) -
Insights from General Motors: Balancing VOC with Engineering Creativity and Business Needs
Case Studies, Interviews—Most companies collect Voice of the Customer (VOC) information and many do it well. Tthe biggest challenge, however, lies in how to use that information and to integrate it into strategic product development decisions. MRT spoke with Vince Barabba, former General Manager for Strategy and Knowledge Development at General Motors (GM), to understand the drivers and practices behind VOC research at GM from the leadership perspective. This report contains a practitioner’s first-hand account of the practices, the challenges and the pitfalls of utilizing customer “voice” information in product development illustrated by several brief case examples.
(8 pages) -
Applying Virtual Customer Methods: VOC Insights from M.I.T.
Event Summaries, Methodologies & Best Practices—The Virtual Customer Initiative (VCI) at M.I.T. is aimed at developing and testing cutting-edge concepts and techniques to improve the speed, accuracy and usability of customer input in product development. The Initiative focuses on Web-based approaches, developing the basic science of techniques to elicit customer input that can be applied across industries and sectors. This report is a summary of an audio session with Dr. John Hauser, leader of the Virtual Customer Initiative and Head of the Marketing Group at the M.I.T. Sloan School of Management. Dr. Hauser addressed what is now available and what is on the horizon for virtual Voice of the Customer (VOC) methods.
(7 pages) -
Using Ethnography to Understand Customer Needs: Insights from Microsoft
Interviews, Methodologies & Best Practices—A Conversation with Senior Design Anthropologist Anne Kiel of Microsoft
While many product development professionals debate the correct use and weight of customer input in the design and development process, few doubt the importance of understanding customer perspectives, opinions and needs. The application of anthropological skills to R&D is a relatively new strategy, but this bridge between the fields is proving to be both strong and popular. MRT spoke with Anne Kiel, a Senior Design Anthropologist for Microsoft Corporation and a leader in this new area of product development. Before joining Microsoft, Anne practiced field ethnography in Norway and Tibet, and initiated an ethnographic research effort at Boeing.
(7 pages) -
Using Voice of the Customer to Link Technology to Market Opportunity
Kurt W. Swogger, Vice President, R&D Plastics, The Dow Chemical Company
Dow Chemical has developed a Speed-based philosophy to dramatically decrease product cycle time and increase product success. One of its key premises is to link early customer input and advice to the market and technology validity of a project. Over the years, Dow has used Performance Requirements, Voice of the Customer and QFD from Six Sigma, and the Summit Process™ by Isis to successfully gather information and commitment from its customers. Dow has reduced its cycle times by a factor of three to five and doubled success rates by using the Speed philosophy which focuses on customer and market knowledge and input.
(31 pages) -
Evolutionary VOC Solutions to Optimize Package Design at Proctor & Gamble
Case Studies, Event Summaries, Presentations—Procter & Gamble (P&G) had found that store brand imitations of one of its flagship brand's name and package caused confusion and loss of adoption at the point of sale. Realizing that it had to change the packaging quickly to regain differentiation while retaining brand equity, the company worked with Affinnova and used its IDEATM solution, a technology that uses genetic algorithms to evolve concepts, products and brands in response to consumer preferences earlier in the process. This report is a summary of a presentation by Jay Fabermann, the former Associate Director of Consumer and Market Knowledge at Procter & Gamble and Ron Gamble a former Senior Vice President of Operations and Marketing at Affinova and accompanies their presentation slides (22 slides).
(8 pages) -
Using Complementary VOC Methodologies at HP
Event Summaries, Methodologies & Best Practices, Presentations—This report is a summary of remarks by Tom Graefe, a Human Factors Principal, and Craig Neely, a Human Factors Engineer, in the Customer Centered Design Services group at Hewlett Packard (HP). This presentation compared and assessed complementary methods for gathering information on customer experience. It covered the variety of VOC methods used by HP in designing a support Web site for business customers, from VOC front-end tools to those used iteratively throughout the lifecycle process. Comments address the issues and challenges of this particular case example, and provide a comparison of VOC methods along with a framework for conducting user-centered design. Download the summary below (7 pages) and then click here to download the presentation slides. (27 slides)
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Voices to Solutions
Case Studies, Presentations—Piyush Sanghani, Sr. Product Research Manager, Product Development & Management, TransUnion
TransUnion is a leading global information solutions company that customers trust as a business intelligence partner and commerce facilitator. This presentation centered on a case study of a recent cross-functional Voice of the Customer initiative that has allowed TransUnion to gain a greater understanding of customer needs and unearth new product ideas. This presentation briefly outlines the objectives for the initiative, the process used, what worked and what did not.
(14 pages) -
Using VOC to Link Technology to Market Opportunity
Presentations—Kurt W. Swogger, Vice President, R&D Plastics, The Dow Chemical Company
Dow Chemical has developed a Speed-based philosophy to dramatically decrease product cycle time and increase product success. One of its key premises is to link early customer input and advice to the market with the technology validity of a project. Over the years, Dow has used Performance Requirements, Voice of the Customer and QFD from Six Sigma, and the Summit Process™ by Isis to successfully gather information and commitment from its customers. Dow has reduced its cycle times by a ratio of three to five and doubled success rates by using the Speed philosophy which focuses on customer and market knowledge and input.
(31 pages)
