TGFR Consulting LLC Collecting the Voice of the Customer (VOC) and Voice of the Business (VOB) establishes the basis for concept development.
VOC Development
VOC (voice of the customer) expresses the effect that a customer would like to have on his life/environment for him to best perform his desired tasks. Creating good VOC includes
- Collecting the User Statements – gathering customer and user statements that relate to needs
- Translating these customer and user statements into VOC, structure statements that define the desires of the customers and users
Customers and Users
Users are the non-business ‘actors’ using the device and are affiliated with the entities that purchase the product. Clinicians, patients and support staff should all be considered users.
The individuals that purchase the product are the paying customers. Users influence the customers, providing guidance into the purchase.
Customers includes the users of the product and those that pay for the product. Each group has needs and these needs must be identified and characterized. VOC translates these needs in a structured framework.
Customer and User Statements
VOC development starts with customer and user engagements and interviews to collect information and statements that will become VOC. Most customers, when interviewed, state their needs in terms of solutions to the last problem encountered. As part of the user needs collection, conscious steps must be taken to identify statements that represent solutions. The VOC collection step transforms these customer solution statements to true user needs.
Identification of solutions statements, as opposed to a statement of need, represents the first step in the process of collecting user needs. Solution statements often involve the word “should” or “must”, indicating that the statement is describing the behavior of the system. The recognition of a solution statement from the customer should prompt the developer/interviewer to probe further with the customer to identify the true need.
Five Whys
| 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 |
The “five-why” tool facilitates the process of driving to the true 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.
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
Following the collection process, the collected needs statements are transformed to effective user need statements. The following are good rules for an effective user need statement.
- The statement must reflect the customer’s definition of value – value must be defined and measured from the customer’s perspective
- The statement must have universal acceptance – it should be relevant to all customers
- 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 collected statements should be reduced to a succinct set of 10-15 user needs. Creating more than 10-15 user need statements impacts subsequent steps that rely on the user needs, diluting the process of identifying the critical parameters for a successful design. After the interview process, the user need statements should go through a consolidation pass to reach a final list a 10-15 distinct statements.
An affinity exercise effectively consolidates collected statements into the final list of 10-15 distinct user need statements. In an affinity exercise, similar statements are grouped on a whiteboard or wall. This grouping is then consolidated into a single, summary user need statement, structured to follow the rules for an effective user need statement.
Once all the collected statements have been grouped, summarized and translated to effective user needs statements, a scoring process 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 should use a Likert scale. The scale should be a 1-10 range, with 10 as the maximum. Following scoring, compile the scaled results into a radar chart mapping needs to performance, as shown below.
In situations 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. |