Voice of the customer metrics need to assess what is important to the end user, owners of the next step of an overall organizational value stream, people involved in the process, and the business as a whole; i.e., more than just customer satisfaction evaluation scores.
The published article (PDF link below) titled ″Inputs Into Action: 9 Steps To a Better VOC-Initiated Improvement Project″ by Forrest Breyfogle addresses how voice of the customer metrics can be integrated within an overall business management system.
Most organizational improvement deployments are not sustainable in part because improvement projects are often created in silos. These localized improvement efforts often do not make a positive impact on the big picture and overall VOC needs.
Determining Voice of the Customer Metrics
Organizations need to first describe what they do and how they measure what they do. An Integrated Enterprise Excellence (IEE) value chain is a means to accomplish this from a high-level point of view where steps can be drilled down. From this IEE value chain, VOC metrics can be identified, tracked, and improved when needed.
For the following IEE value chain, process steps are shown as rectangles and associated metrics as an oblong box. Potential voice of the customer metrics for this IEE value chain are colored yellow. Note how these colored VOC metrics are more than a simple customer satisfaction survey response.
The Integrated Enterprise Excellence (IEE) 9-step system provides a roadmap for analyzing the business as a whole, creating strategies determined through analysis and innovation. The organization can then establish operational scorecard goals for targeted VOC and other value-chain metrics.
In IEE, the 30,000-foot-level reporting methodology is used for creating a process-metric baseline that can demonstrate and quantify how much a process was improved through enhancement efforts.
To implement this business system, one manufacturer took each of these steps and used the method as a roadmap for identification of targeted improvement projects. This tools application is described in the PDF article below.
Additional Information about Voice of the Customer Metrics and IEE
Training: Lean Six Sigma Master Black Belt training where someone does not need to be a Black Belt to attend
Article: ″Acquiring Processing and Deploying Voice Of The Customer″
For more information on how to determine voice of the customer metrics and integrate them into an overall business management system, download the published ASQ Quality Progress January 2012 PDF article by Forrest Breyfogle titled “Inputs Into Action: 9 Steps To A Better VOC-Initiated Improvement Project”.
Contact Us to set up a time to discuss with Forrest Breyfogle how your organization might gain much from integrating Voice of the Customer feedback within an IEE Business Management System.