Here are the methods used to apprehend the Voice of Customer:

• Surveys: To use this method, you must target the specific audience that you are trying to please. Each generation has their set of high priorities. If the product or service that your business provides is for millennials, then you need to target your customers that are between the ages of 23-38.
• Focus Groups: This is used for more detailed information about behaviors and motivation of this targeted group.
• Customer Interview: This is actually your best bet if you can obtain it. It is best if you can make your customer feel as though it is a friendly chat rather than an interview. Many people are complimented that you would take time out from your business day to speak to them. It helps build good client relationships.
• Employee Feedback: Employees would be considered internal customers, and their feedback can be considered suggestions.
• Third-party sites such as Yelp, Google, Group Forums: Since these are open forums, the data given can’t be trusted 100%, but consider it a gauge.

The business owner who really is invested in his business will go out of his way to get this information and why you ask. 

Many companies have talked to their customers to gather this kind of information to improve customer service processes. As an example, consider the next time you are trying to locate a prescription medication made by a specific manufacturer or lab. So you call the pharmacy, and they tell you that you would have to come in to get that information.

So, you call your health insurance company, and without batting an eye they offer to call the pharmacy. This is great customer service, and you the customer, is why this is important. There are many health insurance companies that use Six Sigma methodologies for their excellence.

For more information on our Lean Six Sigma courses and services, please visit 6sigma.com. 

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Since many small businesses are now worldwide with their online presence, the days of truly knowing the customers that frequent your establishment are not what they used to be. In the days of yore, you as the owner might see your customer on a daily basis and talk to them as “friends,” and they would give you an honest answer, as well as remaining loyal to your business. 

Now with the internet, businesses grow faster and quicker, and may not have the personal touch of a local business, so you can’t always establish those friendships with your customers. We discuss the Voice of Customer (VOC) in this infographic, which is an effective way to gather that pertinent information.

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It is easy to run a business when everything flows smoothly, but true colors come out when something doesn’t work out. The first rule is to treat employees with the same respect you would treat a customer. 

By that we aren’t saying you should stop to chit-chat when there is work to be done, but if your employee is working directly with the customers, ask them what they feel would add value to the existing quality in the product or service. 

Let’s review Six Sigma’s Voice of Customer (VOC):

Voice of Customer, or VOC, is the customer’s requirement, what they expect of the product or service — basically what they are paying for. This would include expectations, preferences and any comments on how the product or service could be improved to a higher quality.

How this relates to the company employees is interesting, because how the company treats its employees directly affects customer service and the quality of its products or services all the way around. Creating a company culture of unity and respect will produce loyalty, less turnover, and less sick day absenteeism. Health insurance costs will begin to decrease; because stress is the cause for many illnesses, removing or lowering stress levels will help make the issue go away.

According to an extensive study done by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 2016, 71% of adults reported at least one symptom of stress directly related to work such as a headache, feeling overwhelmed, or anxiety. 

Six Sigma core principles and culture could once again prove to be the light at the end of the tunnel for today’s companies. Stay tuned for more on the subject. For more information on our courses and services please visit 6sigma.com. 

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Voice of Customer, or VOC, is how you will stay above the competition. Many business owners feel they know exactly what their customers/clients want, but in actuality they don’t. People are constantly changing, so the Six Sigma tool VOC is extremely important.

Let’s take a fictitious scenario that could have happened. As we all know, milk delivery stopped many years ago.Today people buy their milk from supermarkets, and the need for milk delivery has diminished. This didn’t happen overnight; it was gradual, until one day many people lost their jobs as businesses closed down. 

What if we added Six Sigma methodologies to this scenario?

DMAIC (Define-Measure-Analyze-Improve-Control)

Define: Business is down as people are cancelling their service. I have 10 truck drivers delivering milk and dairy products to many customers. I will reach out to my customers and ask if milk is still important to them, and if not what is their new beverage or product of choice.

Measure: Look at the ledgers and find the data that shows how much business is down and in what areas. Then get all the data that shows how much is spent on gas and maintenance of trucks. Assess all outgoing and incoming data.

Analyze: After looking at all the data, it seems that people are moving away from milk and dairy products. After speaking with customers, they all agree that delivery service is appreciated but lifestyles are changing.

Improve: I have decided to start offer delivery of groceries for the busy family. As a trial run, I have taken three of my trucks and offered my current milk clients this service. They stated that early morning delivery is still great because both parents are at work all day. This has kept my business going, and business is up since I am the only one to offer this service.

Control: I will monitor and change as my customers’ needs change. I will continue to keep in touch with my customers and keep an eye on the data and receipts that dictate how business is doing financially. I was also able to keep my drivers on the job. 

* Note: This is a condensed example of could have been done.

For more information on our Lean Six Sigma courses and services, please visit 6sigma.com. 

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One of the most important elements of Six Sigma is customer satisfaction, because without it, your business is not doing its job. Yes you heard that right, your business has a job and that is to keep the customers happy and coming back.

Customer complaints, although hard to take, are to be thought of as the voice of the customer and are very important. VOC is to be heard and not ignored, since the customer is frequenting your establishment and spending his or her hard-earned money. They deserve the best your business can offer.

A few important points:

• Listen to what the complaint is (what is the source of the issue?)
• Get your Pareto Chart and determine the problems or causes in a process (Root Cause Analysis)
• Next, get the DMAIC template: Define-Measure-Analyze-Improve-Control

With the Pareto Chart and Root Cause Analysis, you will find out what is causing the issue. When you feel you have found the cause, now it is time to eliminate this issue. If the issue is not eliminated, then your customer will just eliminate himself or herself from your business!

Customer Loyalty

By taking the time to listen to VOC and then taking the time to fix the issue, you will encourage customer loyalty, because the customer feels that they have been heard and valued. Think about it: your customer picked your establishment to spend their money…don’t they deserve to be heard?  Customer loyalty is priceless.

For more information on our Six Sigma training courses or services please visit 6sigma.com.

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As a business owner or manager, it is essential that motivation and inspiration be part of the work culture. Our workplace is made up of a variety of people in many age groups, but when it comes right down to it, everyone is assessed in the same way when it comes down to our work performance.

In other words, we all want to do a great job, and when we do our jobs right, it is great to have that positive reinforcement.

Ways to Motivate Staff

Establish a team environment by encouraging activities within the work week that lend themselves to team effort. Depending on the industry, it can be anything from a staff meeting that reports how time was utilized much better because work was done as a team, to interactive games among employees encouraging a team effort. It seems childish, but it can raise spirits high and lower employee turnover.

Offer enticing compensation such as bonuses, promotions, and time off as a reward. Your employee knows they are being appreciated, so they give it their all, and it is imperative that management does as well. This alone will increase productivity and loyalty.

Remember Kaizen: continuous improvement in small amounts could also be used to keep management from getting complacent. Your staff is a reflection of how you are doing as a manager. You can apply certain Six Sigma tools such as VOC (Voice of the Customer) towards your staff. Ask them what is important to them, and listen so they feel heard.

It will pay off in a loyal, hard-working staff that will make your business a success on many levels!

For more information on our Six Sigma training courses or services please visit 6sigma.com.

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Why We Need These Tools 

There are a few important reasons why the practice of Six Sigma incorporates these tools:

• To determine what is truly important to your customers
• To arrange the end result that is consistent to a customer’s needs
• To estimate how much of the customer’s needs you can fulfill and still make a profit

There are several ways to collect data for the Voice of the Customer:

Interviews: These are used when teams want to really get an understanding of their customer’s needs and how they use the product or service that your business provides. These are professional one-on-one interviews.

Point-of-Use Observation: A way to see the product or service being used by your customer in their natural environment. Through observation, one could gain knowledge to improve the product or service.

Focus Groups: These cover a large group rather than one-on-one interviews, so for that reason alone they seem much more efficient. However, not all participants are truly qualified.

Surveys: These should be used only after other points of contact have been exercised. These are great to confirm findings that have already been established through other means. Surveys are also good at gathering measurable data.

Kano Analysis: This gets down to specifics if your product or service has different features that your customers place value on. This tool helps you understand different levels of values on specific features your customers deem important or unimportant.

This is just an abbreviated example of the Six Sigma VOC. If you would like to dive further into the VOC, take one of our Six Sigma training classes today!

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Change is inevitable. Change is the norm of the day. The first lessons I learnt when I attended a class on ‘Change Management’ was that organizations have to be amoebic. My professor explained to me that the word Amoeba was derived from Greek and denoted “to change”. An Amoeba is a unicellular organism which moves by continually changing its body shape and forming extensions called pseudo pods (false feet). It can live almost anywhere because of its simple structure. The idea of an Amoeba that can change so easily has always stuck with me. It is very relevant to organizations facing turbulent competition which are under constant pressure to adapt and change. They need to be ‘Amoebic’.

In this discussion we will compare organizations on their relative flexibility and their capability to change. We will refer the more flexible ones as ‘Amoebic organizations’.

Amoebic Organizations:

Amoebic organizations as explained above have an advantage of flexibility over Non-Amoebic organizations. They have a fairly good sense of what to expect and how to manage their operations to meet those expectations. They often do competitive research, debate new ideas, and have a clear understanding of what they want to do and how to get there. These organizations are the harbinger of innovation and seek out flexibility to improve their chances of success. The Management of Change in such organizations is a natural process and is, by far, easily imbibed in the corporate culture.

Non-Amoebic Organizations:

At the other end are the organizations that are less receptive and less susceptible to change. While both Amoebic and Non-Amoebic organizations are aware of competitors and do similar environmental analysis yet the structures of Non-Amoebic organizations do not allow free flow of ideas, experimentation or innovation. These organizations are bureaucratic and often find it difficult to deal with changes in policy and execution. Even though there is nothing wrong in the way they function yet when it boils down to who adopts change first, it is not them!!

Is complexity key?

This debate is not about the size or scale of organizations and does not dismiss larger organizations merely on the pretext of complexity. Rather the central idea is to think in terms of bringing flexibility to the work ethos and strive for excellent performance irrespective of scale. After all, we must remember that all business organizations function towards an economic goal and introducing change makes sense only when it is economically viable.

The growth of “Matrix” and “Project” organizational structures is a good example of ‘flexibility’ which traditional organizational structures failed to offer.  People now work across various functions cut across lines of command, share ideas and initiate innovation. The Human Resource person is no longer restricted to his own functional area. Instead, he works with people from Operations, Marketing, IT, Planning, Finance, etc. and gets involved in the whole story rather than just one slice of the organization. This is a big development in how organizations have changed in contrast to the traditional, hierarchical structures.

How to strike a balance?

There is no need to have firms at either extreme mentioned above. Instead, organizations should strive to be somewhere in the comfortable middle. This can be explained on the following grounds.

Firstly, each organization has its own unique needs and this varies from industry to industry. The technology needs of a mining company will be different from those of a health care company. A fishing company may or may not have the need for as  high a level of sophistication as a software development company.

Secondly, flexibility has to be understood on the grounds of a cost-benefit analysis. How much does it cost to be flexible in terms of future benefits or returns? Is it a win-win situation?

Thirdly, organizations should watch before they leap on the ‘Amoebic Trail’! Flexibility does not always guarantee success and each organization must know its own strengths and weaknesses in order to improvise. The ideal balance when managing change is to capitalize on the strengths and underscore weaknesses.

Lastly, an aptitude for change is always good as it makes the process of change easier. When change is inevitable, you should not be rigid in your attitude. If you are rigid, you cannot be Amoebic. If you are not Amoebic, how will you survive turbulent changes?

Interested to enroll at our Six Sigma training courses near you? Get more information on our courses or services, please click here: www.6sigma.com/course-schedule-and-registration/.

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Understanding your customers will enable you to set priorities and goals for your business that are in agreement to fulfill your customer’s needs. The beauty of social media as a VOC tool is that it is social! A customer could feel like they are under a microscope when being asked questions through a formal interview situation; social media removes that. Although you can ask direct questions through social media, the platforms offer a more casual environment, where friends talk and discuss opinions on a product or service and how they feel about it.

Establishing a good social media presence is crucial in determining how your business will keep evolving, and in what direction you will need to take it in order to fill the ever changing customer needs.

Social Media is all About Sharing:

In the old days, businesses and companies would send out a holiday card (with the staff picture on it) during the holiday season, and that was about the extent of their sharing. Today, with social media at its peak, most savvy businesses have a company page that keeps customers in touch with new products, allowing them to have a voice and establish a “friendship” with your business and staff.

Social media is a modern way of establishing the customer service relationship of yesteryear. Without changing the subject too much, social media is also a great advertising tool, as the new digital word of mouth. Your customer will invite a friend to “like” your company page and they will start reading and pretty soon you will have another like-minded customer at your helm.

Let’s face it, your customer or client is the most important part of your business, so establishing a “friendship” with them by sharing and keeping in touch with them and their ever changing needs is just a smart business practice and will ensure future on-going success.

Interested in learning more about other Lean Six Sigma tools such as VOC? Enroll at our Six Sigma training courses near you! For more information on our courses or services please click here: www.6sigma.com/course-schedule-and-registration/.

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