Translating Customer Needs into Key Process Measures

Listening to the Voice of the Customer.

Do we really know the answer to these questions?

1. How does the customer view my process?
2. When it starts for them?
3. When it is finished?
4. What is the customer looking for when measuring the performance of my process ?
5. How well does my process meet the customer’s expectation of what constitutes value ‘in their eyes’?

We must first understand who the Customer actually is.  We should then define how to listen to the Customer when he is expressing his opinions about the quality of our products or services.  There may already be an established process within your business to extract this valuable information on an ongoing basis (Market Research), however, it may also be the case that the business does not capture such information in a coherent and usable format.  This is often the case with internal customers.  Therefore, specific techniques and deeper analysis is required to understand what the customers requirements for the process output actually are.