Voice of the customer
Customers speak in feelings and stories. Improvement needs requirements you can measure. The voice of the customer connects the two.
About 5 minutes to read.
Key idea
Customers rarely hand over a specification. They say things like “I never know when you are coming” or “your forms are a nightmare”. Those comments are gold, but a team cannot measure a nightmare. The work is to listen carefully, group what people say, and translate each need into a requirement that is critical to quality, a CTQ, with a measure and a target.
Listening can be formal, through interviews, surveys and focus groups, or wonderfully ordinary: reading complaint emails, sitting with the contact centre for an afternoon, or noting what customers ask when they ring.
Example: a GP surgery
“I can never get through”
A GP surgery collects comments from patients for a month. The loudest theme is the 8am phone scramble. Underneath it sit two different needs: getting an appointment when it is urgent, and being able to plan routine visits.
The team turns these into two CTQs. Urgent requests answered with a decision within two hours of the call. Routine appointments bookable at least two weeks ahead. Both can be measured from the booking system, so the surgery can see whether its changes help.