The Voice of the Customer

Abstract

In recent years, many U.S. and Japanese firms have adopted Quality Function Deployment (QFD). QFD is a total-quality-management process in which the “voice of the customer” is deployed throughout the R&D, engineering, and manufacturing stages of product development. For example, in the first “house” of QFD, customer needs are linked to design attributes thus encouraging the joint consideration of marketing issues and engineering issues. This paper focuses on the “Voice-of-the-Customer” component of QFD, that is, the tasks of identifying customer needs, structuring customer needs, and providing priorities for customer needs.
In the identification stage, we address the questions of (1) how many customers need be interviewed, (2) how many analysts need to read the transcripts, (3) how many customer needs do we miss, and (4) are focus groups or one-on-one interviews superior? In the structuring stage the customer needs are arrayed into a hierarchy of primary, secondary, and tertiary needs. We compare group consensus (affinity) charts, a technique which accounts for most industry applications, with a technique based on customer-sort data. In the stage which provides priorities we present new data in which product concepts were created by product-development experts such that each concept stressed the fulfillment of one primary customer need. Customer interest in and preference for these concepts are compared to measured and estimated importances. We also address the question of whether frequency of mention can be used as a surrogate for importance. Finally, we examine the stated goal of QFD, customer satisfaction. Our data demonstrate a self-selection bias in satisfaction measures that are used commonly for QFD and for corporate incentive programs.
We close with a brief application to illustrate how a product-development team used the voice of the customer to create a successful new product.

Full text

Voice of the Customer
Steven P. Gaskin, Abbie Griffin, John R.
Hauser, Gerald M. Katz, and Robert L.
Klein
DEFINITION
The Voice of the Customer (VOC) is a term
used in business to describe the process of
capturing customers’ requirements. The VOC is
a product-development technique that produces
a detailed set of customer wants and needs, which
are organized into a hierarchical structure, and
then prioritized in terms of relative importance
and satisfaction with current alternatives.
The VOC process has important outputs and
benefits for product developers. VOC provides
• a detailed understanding of the customer’s
requirements
• a common language for the team going
forward
• key inputs for the setting of appropriate
design specifications for the new product or
service
• a highly useful springboard for product
innovation.
There are four aspects of the VOC
– customer
needs, a hierarchical structure, priorities, and
customer perceptions of performance.
DESCRIPTION AND COMMENTARY
VOC studies typically consist of both qualitative
and quantitative market-research steps. They
are generally conducted at the start (or ‘‘fuzzy
front end’’) of any new product, process, or
service design initiative to better understand
the customer’s wants and needs (see
FRONT
END OF INNOVATION
). The VOC can also be a
key input for new-product definition,
QUALITY
FUNCTION DEPLOYMENT (QFD)
,orthe
setting of detailed design specifications (see
PRODUCT SPECIFICATIONS). 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 dis-
cussion guide, either conducting or observing
and analyzing the interviews, and extracting and
processing the needs statements. Only by being
highly involved can the team fully internalize
the VOC and make effective product-design
decisions (see
PRODUCT DESIGN).
As noted in the definition, there are four
aspects of the VOC
– customer needs, a hier-
archical structure of the needs, priorities, and
customer perceptions of performance.
1
Customer needs. A customer need is a descrip-
tion, in the customer’s own words, of the benefit
to be fulfilled by the product or service. For
example, when describing diagonal lines on a
computer monitor, a customer might want them
‘‘to look like straight lines with no stair-step
effect.’’ Note that the customer need is not a
solution, such as a particular type of monitor
(XGA, Megapixel, flat screen, flat panel, etc.),
nor a physical measurement (number of notice-
able breaks in the line), but rather a detailed
description of how the customer wants images
to appear on the monitor (Griffin and Hauser,
1993).
2
The distinction between physical measure-
ments and customer needs has proven to be
one of the keys to the success of marketing
tactics. As illustrated in Figure 1, the ‘‘lens’’
model suggests that customers see the world
through the lens of their perceptions (their
needs) (Brunswick, 1952). The lens model says
that customers choose (buy a product or service)
if they prefer that product over others and it is
available to them in the marketplace. However,
preferences are based on how customers perceive
the world. This perception may or may not be
totally accurate. It is based, of course, on the
product’s features, but it is also based on the
image created by advertising, packaging, word
of mouth, social context, and so on. Marketing is
an integrated activity that attempts to design the
product (physical features) and the marketing
to influence customer perceptions. Within the
context of the lens model, the VOC identifies
the dimensions of customer value (customer
needs) and how customers form preferences
with respect to those needs (importance of those
customer needs). The VOC might also identify
how advertising, and so on, affect perceptions,
availability, and perceived price.
Wiley International Encyclopedia of Marketing,
edited by Jagdish N. Sheth and Naresh K. Malhotra.
Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons Ltd

2 Voice of the Customer
Product features
Advertising, and
so on.
Availability,
price
Choice
Perceptions Preferences
Figure 1 The lens model of customer choice.
Knowingcustomerneedsiscriticaltoboth
product development and marketing. For
example, if a product-development team focuses
too early on solutions, they might miss creative
opportunities. A computer-monitor team might
be tempted to focus on the size of the monitor
or the shape. However, readability might
also depend on the ambient room light and
reflections, the colors that the software designer
chooses, the ratio of the height of small letters
to that of capital letters, and even the style of
the typeface (serif or sans serif, proportional or
fixed, etc.). All of these design attributes interact
with the size and shape of a monitor to affect
the customer need of ‘‘easy-to-read text.’’ Some
may be less costly and more effective, some may
be synergistic with changing the monitor’s size
and shape, but all should be considered before a
final design is chosen for the monitor.
Discussions with customers usually identify
75
–150 phrases that might be considered an
articulation of customer needs. Such phrases
might include basic needs (what a customer
assumes a monitor will do), articulated needs
(what a customer will tell you that he, she, or
they want a monitor to do), and exciting needs
(those needs which, if they are fulfilled, would
delight and surprise the customer) (see also
KANO
MODEL OF CUSTOMER SATISFACTION
). It is
extremely important that these customer needs
be stated in the customers’ own words, and not in
industry or company jargon, in order to not lose
the meaning.
Identifying customer needs is primarily a
qualitative research task. In a typical study,
between 10 and 30 customers are interviewed
for approximately one hour in a one-on-one
setting. For example, a customer might be asked
to picture him- or herself viewing work on a
computer. As the customer describes his or
her experience, the interviewer keeps probing,
searching for better and more complete descrip-
tions of how he or she views data, images, video,
or anything else, how he or she works with those
images, working conditions, ambient lighting,
and so on. The goal is to experience the experi-
ence of the customer. Sometimes, the interviews
take place at the site where the customer uses the
product
– for example, VOC interviews have
been conducted on oil-drilling platforms for
manufacturers of oil-drilling equipment. This
method of data collection is sometimes referred
to as customer visits (McQuarrie, 2008), contextual
inquiry,orethnography.
The interviews are called ‘‘experiential,’’
because they focus on the customers’ experi-
ences. In the interview, the customer might
be asked to voice needs relative to a number
of real experiences. The interview ends when
the interviewer feels that no new needs can be
elicited from that customer.
While it is tempting to simply ask customers,
‘‘What are your needs?’’ customers often have
difficulty articulating them. It is much better
to infer customer needs from experiential inter-
views or observation.
Hierarchical structure. The average marketing
manager cannot work directly with the 75
–150
detailed customer needs found in the first step of
the VOC process. A simpler structure is needed
that focuses both strategy and tactics. The
‘‘Voice of the Customer’’ structures customer
needs into a hierarchy of primary, secondary,
and tertiary needs. Primary needs,alsoknownas
strategic needs,arethe2
–10 top-level needs that
are used by the team to set the strategic direction
for marketing. Each primary need is elaborated

Voice of the Customer 3
into 3–10 secondary needs. Secondary needs
indicate more specifically what the marketing
manager must do to satisfy the corresponding
primary (strategic) need. (Secondary needs are
also known as tactical needs.) Tertiary needs,also
known as operational or detailed needs, provide
greater detail so that engineering, R&D, and,
perhaps, the advertising agency, can develop
a detailed set of product characteristics or
advertising copy that satisfies the primary and
secondary needs.
For example, a VOC analysis for movie
theaters identified the following 17 secondary
(tactical needs) structured into 6 primary
(strategic needs):
• Theater selection
– Offers a good selection of movies and
show times
– Easytogetinformationaboutshowtimes
– I can always get into the movie I want to
see
– A variety of easy and economical ways to
buy tickets
• Getting to the theater
– The theater is conveniently located
– There is safe, convenient parking
• Food/refreshments
– Good food is available at a fair price
– Concessions are well run
• The theater building
– Quick and easy access to everything I
need
– Handles crowds well
– Friendly and available customer service
– Clean, well-equipped restrooms
– A comfortable feeling inside the theater
• Inside the theater auditorium
– Clean, comfortable seating
– Auditoriums are clean
• The movie experience
– A great view and sound so I’m right in
the action
– No disturbances during the show.
There are a number of ways to group the
75
–150 tertiary (operational) needs into a more
aggregate set of tactical needs, and then further
into an even smaller set of strategic needs. The
easiest way is to have the product-development
team do so as a group. However, while conve-
nient, this approach has the important limitation
that the results tend to reflect the company’s
organizational chart, that is, how the product
is developed and produced, rather than the
way customers think. It is far better to have
customers group the needs. One way this can
be done is through the use of one or a few
focus groups. A moderator guides the process
and makes sure the groupings make sense and are
sufficiently disaggregate (i.e., that there are suffi-
ciently many tactical needs so that they do not
cover multiple topics). A more statistically repre-
sentative method is to survey a random sample
of current and potential customers and have
them sort the needs individually into piles based
on similarity. This results in a co-occurrence
matrix, which can be analyzed using a hier-
archical clustering routine. The output is a
dendrogram, which shows how the needs should
be grouped for any total number of needs, from
the total number of detailed needs down to two
or more strategic needs. The final number of
primary and secondary needs are then deter-
mined judgmentally on the basis of the output
of the cluster analysis.
Priorities. Some needs have higher priorities
for customers than others. The marketing
manager uses these priorities to make decisions
that balance the cost of fulfilling a customer
need with the desirability (to the customer)
of fulfilling that need. For a movie theater
company, for example, the strategic decision on
whether to provide or communicate improved
movie-viewing experience depends upon the
cost and feasibility of improving the experience
and the priority to the customer of an improved
viewing experience relative to the customer’s
other needs. In the VOC, these priorities
apply to perceived customer needs rather than
product features or engineering solutions. As
an example, a quantitative survey of people
who go to movie theaters yielded the following
importance weights for the 17 secondary needs
(Figure 2).
A number of new techniques have been
developed recently to prioritize customer
needs. One, called teaching agents to choose,
is an incentive compatible direct-elicitation
technique.
3
During the survey, respondents

4 Voice of the Customer
A great view and sound so I'm right in the action
Clean, comfortable seating
No disturbances during the show
Auditoriums are clean
A comfortable feeling inside the theater
I can always get into the movie I want to see
Clean, well-equipped restrooms
Concessions are wellrun
Good food is available at a fair price
Friendly and available customer service
There is safe, convenient parking
Handles crowds well
Quick and easy access to everything I need
The theater is conveniently located
A variety of easy and economical ways to buy tickets
Easy to get information about show times
Offers a good selection of movies and show times
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90%
Importance (0–100 scale)
100%
Figure 2 Importance ratings for movie theater needs.
give instructions to a hypothetical ‘‘agent’’ about
what rules to use when deciding to choose which
product to buy. Priorities of the needs can be
estimated by tallying the frequency of mention
of the needs referenced in these rules. Another
technique, MaxDiff, involves an exercise where
respondents pick the most and least important of
a series of subsets of needs. The resulting scores
are not subject to scale usage bias, which can lead
to problems, particularly in international studies.
Customer perceptions of performance. Customer
perceptions are also derived from quantitative
market research about how customers perceive
the performance of products that compete in
the market being studied. If no product exists
as yet, the perceptions indicate how customers
now fulfill those needs. (For example, existing
patterns of medical care serve as generic compe-
tition for health-maintenance organizations.
Automobile and bus transportation serve as
generic competition for Southwest Airlines.)
Knowledge of which products fulfill which
needs best, how well those needs are fulfilled,
and whether there are any gaps between the best
product and ‘‘our’’ existing product provide
further input into marketing decisions.
Customer perceptions are often displayed via
a ‘‘snake plot,’’ called so because each product’s
performance ‘‘snakes’’ across the page. These
data are often obtained via a questionnaire in
which each respondent rates each product
(that they consider) on each of the secondary
customer needs.
For example, when people who go to movie
theaters were asked to rate how well the
theater they attend most often performed on

Voice of the Customer 5
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
Performance (0–10 scale)
A great view and sound so I'm right in the action
Clean, comfortable seating
No disturbances during the show
Auditoriums are clean
A comfortable feeling inside the theater
I can always get into the movie I want to see
Clean, well-equipped restrooms
Concessions are wellrun
Good food is available at a fair price
Friendly and available customer service
There is safe, convenient parking
Handles crowds well
Quick and easy access to everything i need
The theater is conveniently located
A variety of easy and economical ways to buy--
Easy to get information about show times
Offers a good selection of movies and show times
Overall
Men
Women
Figure 3 Performance ratings for movie theaters.
the secondary needs, we obtained the plot in
Figure 3.
EXAMPLES OF VOC’S ROLE IN PRODUCT
DEVELOPMENT
During a VOC for the renal division of Baxter
Healthcare, users expressed a need to quickly
understand the nature and seriousness of the
various alarms that typically sounded throughout
the day. The product’s designers developed a
traffic-light device with colored lights that indi-
cated the gravity of the problem at a glance.
A few years ago, Intel, the world’s largest
manufacturer of microprocessors, embarked on
a very public strategy to develop specialized
microprocessors for various applications. To
better understand customer needs surrounding
these applications, the company began to
develop its own VOC. Using a combination of
ethnography and sit-down interviews, followed
by group affinitization processes and large-scale
quantitative prioritization surveys, the company
has now conducted more than 20 such studies on
a host of topics, ranging from extremely simple
consumer applications, to highly advanced
applications with IT Directors at very large
companies.
One of the most compelling products to
emerge from this strategy is the v-Pro micro-
processor for business desktop computers. The
v-Pro technology addresses a number of crit-
ical problems for IT Directors who must manage
a large ‘‘fleet’’ of company computers, and

6 Voice of the Customer
ensure their security from external corruption
and tampering. The v-Pro offers several new
features
– which have proven to be extremely
attractive to IT Directors
– that emerged from
the identification of key unmet needs in the VOC
process. Launched in mid-2006, the v-Pro
became the fastest product in Intel’s history to
exceed $1 billion in revenue.
PPG Industries, a leading manufacturer
of industrial coatings and other commercial
materials, trained product development teams
across most of its major divisions in the use of
VOC. These teams then conducted a number
of highly successful VOC studies throughout
the world, on topics as diverse as applications
for polyurethane coatings, auto paint used in
body shops, and eco-friendly uses for fiberglass.
Products that emerged from these applications
include a chemical-agent-resistant coating used
in military applications, a new material used
for golf-ball covers, and an advanced fiberglass
product used in wind-power generation. This
latter product allowed PPG to acquire a major
share of this rapidly expanding industry.
As may be seen in these examples, gathering
the VOC is an extremely important part of the
‘‘fuzzy front end’’ of the new-product develop-
ment process. It forms a solid basis for design and
marketing decisions from concept development
through product launch.
ENDNOTES
1
The Voice of the Customer has its origins in
the QFD process, where it is used to develop the
customer needs that are linked to performance
measures. This is why the definition used here
is narrower than the generic use of VOC, which
can refer to customer feedback in any form. See
Griffin and Hauser (1993).
2
Much of the material used here is drawn from
an MIT Sloan Courseware document by John
R. Hauser, ‘‘Note on the Voice of the Customer,’’
MIT, Cambridge, MA 2008. MIT Sloan grants
the nonexclusive right to use this material.
MIT Sloan retains a nonexclusive right to this
material.
3
‘‘Incentive compatible’’ means the incentives
for survey respondents are set up in a way that
they benefit most from responding in a desired
way (in this case, telling the truth).
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