Transcript Slide 1

Voice-Of-The-Customer
Part 2
How to Interview a Customer
WUT - Spring 2007
Voice-of-the-Customer - Part 2
1
An Integrated Strategic Technology Planning
and Development Environment
New
Concept
Ideation
Technology
Roadmapping
Voice
of the
Customer
Stage Gate
Technology
Development
and Review
WUT - Spring 2007
Intellectual
Property
Generation
Voice-of-the-Customer - Part 2
2
The Customer Interview Process
The process of interviewing customers is the most important
element of the overall Voice-of-the-Customer element of strategic
technology planning.
A poor interview process:
• Generates bad input, making the rest of your efforts a waste
of time,
• Can raise false expectations in your customer,
• Can drive customers away from you.
Conversely, a good interview process:
Psychological
impact
• Sets the correct direction for all other processes,
• Pro-actively clarifies expectations,
• Can bind you closely together with your customer.
WUT - Spring 2007
Voice-of-the-Customer - Part 2
3
Why we need a process:
• It is especially important for technologists to develop strong customer
interview skills:
• Technology is an important potential source of solutions,
• And since technologists will be the ones often solving the problems,
it is best to learn the problems directly from customers,
• They can discover new needs that others don’t see,
• But in general, technologists may lack the “people skills” needed to
conduct good interviews.
• They can easily create false expectations for customers.
• Establishing a systematic process for interviewing customers
can help!
WUT - Spring 2007
Voice-of-the-Customer - Part 2
4
Return to the “Perfect Mousetrap” example…
• You are a brand new engineer just hired by Acme Trap Company.
• Your company makes all kinds of animal traps.
• Your very first assignment is to design the next generation product
line for your company.
• Your first task is to interview customers to determine WHAT
features your new trap family will have.
• So, let’s get started!
WUT - Spring 2007
Voice-of-the-Customer - Part 2
5
Based on the customer interviews, your job is to fill in
these boxes:
WUT - Spring 2007
Voice-of-the-Customer - Part 2
6
Customer Interview Process – Step 0
Before you meet with customers, you need to clearly define the
following for the next generation product line you will be developing:
1. Fields of use – Where are devices of this type used?
Expect to identify one to three fields.
2. Applications – In each field, how is it used?
There may be more than one application in a particular field.
3. Primary focus – What is the customer’s “killer application”?
Identify a particular field of use and particular “killer application”
to focus on.
What is a “killer app”?
WUT - Spring 2007
Voice-of-the-Customer - Part 2
7
What is a “killer app”?
Once upon a time,
• The personal computer was invented.
• They were very interesting,
• And some Geeks bought them (Apple IIe).
• But then – “Visicalc” was invented.
• Visicalc was the first primitive spreadsheet software.
• Suddenly, your PC could finally do something useful!
• So, everyone now had an honest excuse to buy a PC!
• Thus, Viscalc was a “killer application”, or “killer app”.
WUT - Spring 2007
Voice-of-the-Customer - Part 2
8
You do some research and discover that Acme Trap Company makes
two families of animal traps (two fields of use):
• Small animal traps (rats, mice),
• Large animal traps (squirrels, foxes).
With some additional research, you discover that these traps operate
in two general ways (two applications):
• Kill traps
• Live traps
This allows you to do a simple market segmentation…
WUT - Spring 2007
Voice-of-the-Customer - Part 2
9
Acme Trap Company Market Segmentation
Fields of use:
• Small animal traps (rats, mice),
• Large animal traps (squirrels, foxes).
Applications:
• Kill traps
• Live traps
Acme Trap
Co.
Large
Animal
Small
Animal
Kill Traps
Fur hunters Households,
food industry
Live Traps
Zoos,
naturalists
WUT - Spring 2007
(no products)
Voice-of-the-Customer - Part 2
Here’s Acme’s business –
You have done some
additional research to
determine the various
specific applications for
your products…
10
Acme Market Segmentation
With more investigation, it turns out
that Acme’s “killer application”
is small animal (rat and mouse)
kill traps for use in
warehouses where grain is stored,
like in the movie...
Acme Trap
Co.
Large Animal
Small Animal
Kill Traps
Fur hunters
Households,
food industry
Live traps
Zoos,
naturalists
WUT - Spring 2007
Voice-of-the-Customer - Part 2
Grain
warehouses
11
An aside…
• This course is not a course in marketing, so we won’t go into
depth on identification and/or selection of killer apps.
• Let’s just sat that these are the areas where you believe you can
make a lot of money by introducing a new product, which is a
function of factors such as:
• Do I know the customers, and do I know how to sell to them?
• Do I know how I would develop and manufacture the new
products?
• Do I have a rough idea of how much money I could make?
In any case, you need to know what your killer app is before you go
out to talk to the customer.
Why?
WUT - Spring 2007
Voice-of-the-Customer - Part 2
12
Market segmentation focuses customer interviews…
• It is important to define the particular market segment that you
will be discussing with the customer,
• Otherwise, the interview process could spiral out of control,
• Or you could waste lots of time talking about unimportant
subjects.
• Knowing your focus before you go out and interview customers
may seem like common sense – of course you would do this!
1. But it can be very embarrassing if you don’t clearly define the
focus before talking to customers,
2. And it’s amazing how often a team goes out without a
common focus area.
• This is part of making this a systematic process and controlling
customer expectations.
WUT - Spring 2007
Voice-of-the-Customer - Part 2
13
Caveat…
• We said one potential weakness of non-systematic
voice-of-the-customer processes is that they can create
false customer expectations,
• But that one problem of systematic voice-of-the-customer
processes is that they can prevent you from being more creative
than your customer.
• The selection of an area of focus for your V-O-C interview is critical,
since while this helps avoid the first problem, it can make the
second problem worse!
• So maybe you might want to have an ideation session with your
customer to balance this situation.
WUT - Spring 2007
Voice-of-the-Customer - Part 2
14
In any case, our target product for Acme’s “killer app”:
Small animal kill traps for grain warehouses
So now we’re ready to do the customer interview…
WUT - Spring 2007
Voice-of-the-Customer - Part 2
15
Customer interviews can be done in four steps:
3
WUT - Spring 2007
1
2
Voice-of-the-Customer - Part 2
4
16
Customer Interview Process – Step 1
Step 1.1: General Customer Needs For the field of use and application (market segment) being
focused on, determine customer needs. Use the following
guideline questions (add/change/delete as appropriate):
• Why?
Why is this this product/service needed?
• What?
What specifically will it be used for?
• Who?
Who does/will/could use it?
• When?
When does/will it be used?
• Where?
Where will it be used?
• How?
How will it be used?
WUT - Spring 2007
Voice-of-the-Customer - Part 2
17
General Customer Needs
• The answers to these general questions may seem obvious.
• You may already know the answers before you meet with a customer.
• But it’s good to ask these questions anyway.
• You may discover new needs that you didn’t know about,
• You may discover that the customer is using the products in a way
that is different than what you assumed.
• So, even if you have the answers already, you should review this
list of questions with the customer anyway.
• This is part of making this a systematic process.
WUT - Spring 2007
Voice-of-the-Customer - Part 2
18
Customer Interview Process – Step 1
Step 1.2: Specific Customer Needs Having obtained a general understanding of the product from
Step 1.1, determine what specific attributes that the product must
have. Typical areas of needs are:
• Performance – What exactly does the customer need it do?
• Quality/Reliability – How well must it do it?
• “User Interface” – How will the user interact with it?
• Cost – How sensitive to cost is it?
• Regulation – Is its use or design regulated in any way?
As you obtain input, use the “5 Whys” approach to drill down into needs.
WUT - Spring 2007
Voice-of-the-Customer - Part 2
19
The 5 Whys Approach
• You ask a customer a question.
• They give you an answer.
• You ask: “Why do you need that?”
• They give you an answer.
• You ask: “Why do you need that?”
• They give you an answer.
• You ask “Why do you need that” five times.
• This gets you to the root cause.
WUT - Spring 2007
Voice-of-the-Customer - Part 2
20
Interview with Grain Warehouse Owner:
• You: So, how important is reliability of the trap to you?
• Customer: It is very important!
• You: Why?
• Customer: Because I don’t have any way to repair them.
• You: But they are simple to repair, so why don’t you fix them?
• Customer: Because I have nobody to repair them.
• You: But any idiot can repair them! Why don’t you have anyone?
• Customer: My warehouse is a totally automated “lights-out”
warehouse, there ARE no people in the warehouse!
• You: So, who is going to take the dead rats out of the trap?
• Customer: Good question!
WUT - Spring 2007
Voice-of-the-Customer - Part 2
21
Why the Five Whys Technique is Useful…
• For this example, by the fifth question we learned some very
important points:
• There’s no-one around to fix the traps, and
• There’s no-one around to remove the dead rats, and
• There’s no-one around to re-bait and re-set the traps!
• So, it looks like we need a trap:
~ That doesn’t need to be manually re-baited and reset,
~ That somehow gets rid of the dead rats.
• Sounds like a great topic for an ideation session?
WUT - Spring 2007
Voice-of-the-Customer - Part 2
22
You now have enough information to complete the
Step 1 box:
1
Now we can add:
• Self-baiting
• Self-setting
• Self-cleaning
WUT - Spring 2007
Voice-of-the-Customer - Part 2
23
What Next?
• When you complete this step, you may choose to continue with the
following three steps.
• Continue the interview only if you can write short, clear
customer need statements.
• Or, you may choose to conclude the interview to go home and
document the results, and then have a second interview.
• At the first interview, you may obtain very much information, or
conflicting information, which makes it difficult to write the
customer needs statements at the interview.
• Further, you may want to conclude the interview at this point so
you can rationalize and group the customer needs…
WUT - Spring 2007
Voice-of-the-Customer - Part 2
24
Logical grouping of Customer Needs
Eliminates Mice
Controls
WUT - Spring 2007
Effective Luring
Good Camouflage
Reliable
Effective
Small
Kills Quickly
etc…
Easy to Use Esy to Bait
Easy to Set
Easy to Empty
etc…
Safe to Set
Safety
Safe from Kids
etc…
Government EPA
etc…
Lure
A lecture in the ideation
module of this course
will address techniques
for generating and
grouping topics:
- Affinity Diagram
- Tree Diagram
Voice-of-the-Customer - Part 2
25
Step 2 is to determine customer importance of each of
the needs…
2
WUT - Spring 2007
Voice-of-the-Customer - Part 2
26
Customer Interview Process – Step 2
Step 2.1: Customer Need Importance • At this point, specific customer need statements have been
prepared.
• Customer is asked to confirm need statements.
• Customer then ranks the needs in order from 1 = most important,
2 = second most important, etc…
WUT - Spring 2007
Voice-of-the-Customer - Part 2
27
Customer Need Importance:
• Customers may find it difficult to rank the importance of needs in
first, second, third… order.
• They may want to rank everything #1.
• And they may disagree among themselves as to which is most
important.
• This part of the interview may take a lot of time!
• The customer will learn more about their own needs by doing this.
• In the end, these interviews can be just as helpful to
customers as they are to you.
• So, you should always give the results to your customer.
• But if at all possible, get a 1, 2, 3… ranked priority for needs!
WUT - Spring 2007
Voice-of-the-Customer - Part 2
28
The Bubble Sort
Here’s a simple technique for forcing a 1, 2, 3… ranking on needs.
• For the first two needs on the list, ask the customer which is more
important.
• If the second is more important, move it up one place,
• If not, leave both where they are.
• Repeat for the second and third needs, then the third and fourth, etc…
• After you get to the bottom, go through the list again.
• Repeat this until no need swap positions on the list.
WUT - Spring 2007
Voice-of-the-Customer - Part 2
29
Now Step 3…
3
WUT - Spring 2007
Voice-of-the-Customer - Part 2
30
Step 3 – Interactions Between Customer Needs
• Here, you compare all the needs as pairs,
• e.g.: kills quickly vs. easy to set.
• The question is: If I design the product to do X well, does that
make it harder or easier to do Y?
• e.g.: If I design a mousetrap that kills quickly, will that make
it easy to set, or hard to set?
• It will probably make it hard to set.
WUT - Spring 2007
Voice-of-the-Customer - Part 2
31
It is important to do this step with the customer:
• When they see the interactions, they may choose to change the
ranking of their needs (e.g., repeat the Bubble Sort).
• It helps to control expectations:
• If they see many negative correlations, they will know why the
product will cost a lot and take a long time to design.
• It will clarify assumptions about the product:
• You assume the trap has a spring in it,
• The larger the spring, the greater the killing force (good),
• But the larger the spring, the greater the setting force (bad).
• So, how can we do this without a spring?
• Negative correlations and the associated assumptions are great
topics for ideation sessions!
• By the way, identification of contradictions is a fundamental
aspect of TRIZ.
WUT - Spring 2007
Voice-of-the-Customer - Part 2
32
Finally, Step 4:
4
WUT - Spring 2007
Voice-of-the-Customer - Part 2
33
Step 4 – Customer Assessment
• Here, the customer compares your products with your competitor’s
products.
• Comparison question to the customer can be quite simple:
Compared to my competitor’s product/service, my offering is:
5 = Much better
4 = Better
3 = Similar
2 = Worse
1 = Much Worse
• If you don’t have an offering at the time of the interview,
- or of the customer has never seen your product,
- or if you don’t have any competitors,
- then you can’t do a direct comparison,
- so the comparison is made with ideal performance.
WUT - Spring 2007
Voice-of-the-Customer - Part 2
34
Three example questions:
• You have a competitor (Ace Traps):
Compared to Ace Traps, how easy to set is my Acme trap?
• You have no competitor:
Compared to the “perfect trap”, how easy to set is my Acme trap?
• The customer has never seen your product:
Compared to the “perfect trap”, how easy to set is the Ace trap?
• Answers to all questions are:
Much Better, Better, Similar, Worse, Much Worse
WUT - Spring 2007
Voice-of-the-Customer - Part 2
35
Step 4 – Customer Assessment
• This is the first time in the interview that you talk about products.
• Here, the customer compares your products with your competitor’s
products.
• This is about perceptions, not about reality.
• Don’t argue with your customer, just record their assessment!
• Yu are not selling your products at this meeting!
• You are learning what your customer thinks.
• If you want to change what your customer thinks, that is a different
meeting.
• You will not be invited back if your interview turns into a sales call.
WUT - Spring 2007
Voice-of-the-Customer - Part 2
36
Tip…
If your view of how your product measures up to customer
expectations differs from that of your customer, an appropriate
response from you would be:
“I have some test data that clearly shows that Acme mouse traps have
a setting force significantly lower that Ace traps. Can we set up a
meeting next week so that I can share that data with you?”
If you don’t have the data, you better get it.
If your trap is, in fact, inferior to your competitors, best to go on to the
next need ASAP.
WUT - Spring 2007
Voice-of-the-Customer - Part 2
37
You have completed the customer interview:
3
WUT - Spring 2007
1
2
Voice-of-the-Customer - Part 2
4
38
Voice of the Customer Input Process:
• Purpose
~ Validate our perceptions and plans - what we do know.
~ Reveal unrecognized customer needs - what we don’t know.
• Desired Strengths
~ Systematic vs. anecdotal – turns over most of the rocks.
~ Fact-based vs. opinion-based prioritization of needs.
• Potential Weaknesses
~ Can create inappropriate customer expectations.
~ Risks compromising intellectual property – tip our hand.
~ Can keep us from being more inventive than our customers.
WUT - Spring 2007
Voice-of-the-Customer - Part 2
39
Customer Assessment Bonus!
The customer assessment portion of QFD can be expanded to form a
valuable strategic planning tool.
We will describe this “Planning Matrix” here, since it provides some
specific lines of questioning that can be included in the customer
interview.
The Planning Matrix can be designed to reveal the following types of
information about specific customer needs:
• How important is this need?
• How well are we doing meeting the need?
• How well is the competition doing meeting the need?
• How well do we want to do in meeting the need?
• Will meeting the need actually help to sell the new product/service?
The ultimate goal is to refine the ranking of Customer Needs
WUT - Spring 2007
Voice-of-the-Customer - Part 2
40
WUT - Spring 2007
Target Needs
Performance Goal
3
5
1
4
2
4
2
3
1
5
1
1.2
1.5
1.2
1
1
-1.8
1
-0.9
0.6
5
5
4
4
4
Voice-of-the-Customer - Part 2
Importance of Need
Sales Point
1
2
3
4
5
Improvement Ratio
Competitor Satisfaction
Customer Needs
Customer Satisfaction
We
have
these
Importance to Customer
Here, we will consider the Planning Matrix as a separate stand-alone
document extracted from the general QFD format…
Let’s talk
about
these
1.67 0.6
1
2
4 0.75
1
4
2
2.5
41
Customer and Competitor Satisfaction:
This, again, is just how well our products meet the customer need,
And how well our competitor’s product meets the need.
WUT - Spring 2007
Target Needs
Performance Goal
3
5
1
4
2
4
2
3
1
5
1
1.2
1.5
1.2
1
1
-1.8
1
-0.9
0.6
5
5
4
4
4
Voice-of-the-Customer - Part 2
Importance of Need
Sales Point
1
2
3
4
5
Improvement Ratio
Competitor Satisfaction
Customer Needs
Customer Satisfaction
Ranking scheme:
5 = Very well
4 = Well
3 = Neutral
2 = Poorly
1 = Very poorly
Importance to Customer
It’s just like before, but we split out our score and our competitor’s score.
1.67 0.6
1
2
4 0.75
1
4
2
2.5
42
Some Details on Customer and Competitor Satisfaction:
• If you have no product, then just put in 3’s for your scores.
• If you have no competitors, put in 3’s for their scores.
• If you have several competitors, you have two choices for how you
ask the question:
• If you are trying to get market share from Competitor A, than ask
the question about Competitor Satisfaction relative to
Competitor A.
• If you haven’t targeted a competitor, then ask the question
relative to the competitor that does best for that need.
• In this case, you also want to find out which competitor does
the best at meeting the need.
WUT - Spring 2007
Voice-of-the-Customer - Part 2
43
Involvement of Customer:
We need to interview the customer to determine:
• Customer Needs,
• Importance to Customer,
• Customer Satisfaction,
• Competitor Satisfaction.
The remainder of the Planning Matrix is completed after the
customer interview.
So, what does that entail?
WUT - Spring 2007
Voice-of-the-Customer - Part 2
44
Sales Point:
• We now ask the following question for each Customer Need:
• How much does improvement in this area
help me sell the product?
• Scoring can be along the lines of:
1
= No sales point (customer expects it)
1.2 = Weak selling point (satisfies customer)
1.5 = Strong selling point (delights customer)
This is pretty subjective and intuitive, so the weights aren’t strong,
but this can influence our ultimate ranking of Customer Needs.
WUT - Spring 2007
Voice-of-the-Customer - Part 2
45
Target Needs:
We can now identify those particular needs that appear to hold the
strongest promise of satisfying the customer.
We can define Target Needs as:
(Sales Point) [(Competitor Satisfaction) – (Customer Satisfaction)]
(Customer Importance)
• The stronger the Sales Point, the larger the Target Need,
• The better our competitors are doing relative to us, the larger the
Target Need,
• The more important the Customer Importance (1 = most important),
the larger the Target Need.
WUT - Spring 2007
Voice-of-the-Customer - Part 2
46
WUT - Spring 2007
Sales Point
Target Needs
Performance Goal
3
5
1
4
2
4
2
3
1
5
1
1.2
1.5
1.2
1
1
-1.8
1
-0.9
0.6
5
5
4
4
4
Voice-of-the-Customer - Part 2
Importance of Need
Competitor Satisfaction
1
2
3
4
5
Improvement Ratio
Customer Satisfaction
Customer Needs
Customer need 1
Customer need 2
Customer need 3
Customer need 4
Customer need 5
Importance to Customer
So for this example, it appears that improving Customer
Needs #1 and #3 will have the most impact…
1.67 0.6
1
2
4 0.75
1
4
2
2.5
47
Performance Goal:
The Target Need indicates which Customer Needs give us the biggest
“bang-for-the-buck”.
WUT - Spring 2007
Target Needs
Performance Goal
3
5
1
4
2
4
2
3
1
5
1
1.2
1.5
1.2
1
1
-1.8
1
-0.9
0.6
5
5
4
4
4
Voice-of-the-Customer - Part 2
Importance of Need
Sales Point
1
2
3
4
5
Improvement Ratio
Competitor Satisfaction
Customer Needs
Customer need 1
Customer need 2
Customer need 3
Customer need 4
Customer need 5
Customer Satisfaction
This is nothing more than
what we want the
Customer Satisfaction
numbers to be after we
develop the new product.
Importance to Customer
Knowing this, we can now determine Performance Goals for each
Customer Need.
1.67 0.6
1
2
4 0.75
1
4
2
2.5
48
Performance Goal:
WUT - Spring 2007
Target Needs
Performance Goal
3
5
1
4
2
4
2
3
1
5
1
1.2
1.5
1.2
1
1
-1.8
1
-0.9
0.6
5
5
4
4
4
Voice-of-the-Customer - Part 2
Importance of Need
Sales Point
1
2
3
4
5
Improvement Ratio
Competitor Satisfaction
Customer Needs
Customer need 1
Customer need 2
Customer need 3
Customer need 4
Customer need 5
Customer Satisfaction
Note: The purpose of
the Target Need is
simply to help set the
Performance Goals
Importance to Customer
Here, our strategy was to increase Needs #1 and #2 to be higher than
our competitor’s level. Of course, you could apply other strategies.
1.67 0.6
1
2
4 0.75
1
4
2
2.5
49
Finishing off the Planning Matrix, for each Customer Need…
Improvement Ratio:
WUT - Spring 2007
Performance Goal
3
5
1
4
2
4
2
3
1
5
1
1.2
1.5
1.2
1
1
-1.8
1
-0.9
0.6
5
5
4
4
4
Voice-of-the-Customer - Part 2
Importance of Need
Target Needs
1
2
3
4
5
Improvement Ratio
Sales Point
Customer Needs
Customer need 1
Customer need 2
Customer need 3
Customer need 4
Customer need 5
Competitor Satisfaction
(Importance to Customer)
(Improvement Ratio)
Customer Satisfaction
Importance of Need:
Importance to Customer
(Performance Goal)
(Customer Satisfaction)
1.67 0.6
1
2
4 0.75
1
4
2
2.5
50
The Bottom Line: We re-prioritize Customer Needs:
WUT - Spring 2007
Target Needs
Performance Goal
3
5
1
4
2
4
2
3
1
5
1
1.2
1.5
1.2
1
1
-1.8
1
-0.9
0.6
5
5
4
4
4
Voice-of-the-Customer - Part 2
Importance of Need
Sales Point
1
2
3
4
5
Improvement Ratio
Competitor Satisfaction
Customer Needs
Customer need 1
Customer need 2
Customer need 3
Customer need 4
Customer need 5
Customer Satisfaction
Customer Need 5
moved up to 4.
Importance to Customer
Customer Need 3
moved up to 2
1.67 0.6
1
2
4 0.75
1
4
2
2.5
51
Final Notes on the Planning Matrix:
• There are other ways to re-calculate the Customer Importance
of Customer Needs.
• You can’t get too wrapped up in the numbers,
• At the end of the analysis, this must make sense to you!
• If not, go back into the numbers and figure out why.
WUT - Spring 2007
Voice-of-the-Customer - Part 2
52