TGFR Consulting LLC Following the identification of the product idea, collecting the Voice of the Customer (VOC) and translating this VOC into high-level user needs begins. These user needs drive the product definition process.
Simply stated, VOC (Voice of the Customer) expresses the effect that a customer would like the product to have on his life/environment. Creating good VOC requires
- Understanding the customers and users of the product
- Collecting customer and user statements
- Translating the customer and user statements into VOC
- Validating the VOC
Understanding Customers and Users
For many products, customers and users are a different person(s), while for some products they may be the same person(s). VOC collection must carefully distinguish between these two groups.
- Users – the non-business ‘actors’ using the device. Users include clinicians, patients and support staff.
- Customers – the individuals that purchase the product.
Generally, users influence the customers, providing guidance into the purchase. Customers may include the users of the product as well as those that pay for the product. Developing the VOC needs to identify and characterize needs for each group. The team developing the VOC must clearly understand who the feedback is coming from.
Collecting and Evaluating VOC
Regardless of the data collection tools used gathering VOC involves customer and user engagements. These engagements will collect the information and statements that will become VOC. Understand that the raw data collected during the engagements does not represent structured VOC need statements. Additional evaluation must be performed.
Often, customers state their needs in terms of solutions to the last problem encountered. Solution statements often involve the word “should” or “must”, indicating that the statement is describing the behavior of the system, not a true user need. The developer/interviewer must remain alert to these solution statements and adjust the interview or analysis to “drill down” to identify the underlying need. If possible, during the interview process, the recognition of a solution statement from the customer or user should prompt the developer/interviewer to probe further with the customer to identify the true need. If the interview cannot probe further, the analysis team can perform their own “drill down” to establish the need.
Tools for Translating VOC into User Needs
The “five-why” tool facilitates the process of driving to the true user need. This iterative, question-asking technique explores the cause-and-effect relationships underlying a problem statement. This technique was originally developed to determine the root cause of a problem, but the basic principle of repeatedly driving for answers to a supporting “why” question works just as effectively determine a true user need statement. Each question forms the basis of the next question. The following table demonstrates the application of the “five-why” tool.
| User Statement | Question |
| The system must deliver a weight-based dose | Why do you want a weight-based dose? |
| The dosing comes from the pharmacy as a weight-based dose | Why does it come from the pharmacy as a weight-based dose? |
| Because the Doctor Prescribes the dose as weight-based |
With this series of questions, successive “whys” have provided the true user need as the following statement:
I need the patient to receive the exact prescription as ordered by the doctor.
Developing True User Needs Statements from VOC
Following the collection process, the team transforms the collected needs statements into effective user need statements. The following are good rules for an effective user need statement.
- The statement reflects the customer’s definition of value – value must be defined and measured from the customer or user’s perspective.
- The statement must have universal acceptance – it should be relevant to all customers/users.
- The statement must be relevant now and in the future.
- The statement must prompt a course of action – statements such as “it must be more reliable” or “easy to use” will not define a course of action.
- The statement must not be open to interpretation
- The statement itself shall not confound the way it or other statements are prioritized – be careful that the statements do not overlap.
To ensure that the final user need statements do conflict or overlap, the process reduces the collected statements to a succinct set of 10-15 user needs. Creating more than 10-15 user need statements impacts the critical processes that rely on the user needs. As an example, too many user needs complicate the process of identifying the key features for a successful design. After the interview process, the user need statements should go through a consolidation pass to reach a final list 10-15 distinct statements.
An affinity exercise effectively consolidates collected statements into the final list of 10-15 distinct user need statements. The process groups similar statements visually. The grouping can use a whiteboard, wall or online tool. After the grouping process, the team formulates a single summary user need statement following the rules for an effective user need statement.
Evaluating the Importance of User Needs
As the final step, a scoring process engages the customers to establish the importance of each user needs. While asking the customer on importance may be beneficial, sometimes working to see the importance relative to the market yields more insights. In this scoring process the team engages customers and users to:
- Score current product performance. This may be a competitor’s or the organizations current product.
- Establish a score for best-in-class performance against the user needs statements.
Scoring uses a Likert scale, with a 1-10 range, with 10 as the maximum. The radar or spider charts provide a good mechanism to visualize the user ratings.
Where competition (or lack of competition) may impact collecting best-in-class scores, a different best-in-class scoring technique can be applied. In this situation, the user should be asked to provide the top score against a user need by considering any piece of equipment in the use area. With this technique, it is very likely that the best-in-class score for each user need will be associated with a different device. This technique will allow devices without competition to find an applicable best-in-class score.
Further Reading
| Topic | Reference |
| Five Whys | Wilson, B. (n.d.). Five-by-five Whys. Retrieved from The Rootisserie: http://www.bill-wilson.net/b73 |
| Affinity Diagrams | Tague, N. R. (2004). QThe Quality Toolbox. In N. R. Tague. Retreived from: http://asq.org/learn-about-quality/idea-creation-tools/overview/affinity.html |
| Likert Scales | Vanek, C. (2012, April 24). Likert Scale – What is it? When to Use it? How to Analyze it? Retrieved from SurveyGizmo: http://www.surveygizmo.com/survey-blog/likert-scale-what-is-it-how-to-analyze-it-and-when-to-use-it/ |
| User Need Statements | Bettencourt, A. W. (Spring 2008). Giving Customers a Fair Hearing. MIT Sloan Management Review, Vol 49 NO 3. |