In marketing, the voice of the customer (VOC) summarizes customers' expectations, preferences and aversions. A widely used form of VOC

market research Market research is an organized effort to gather information about target markets and customers: know about them, starting with who they are. It is an important component of business strategy and a major factor in maintaining competitiveness. Ma ...

produces a detailed set of customer wants and needs, organized into a hierarchical structure, and then prioritized in terms of relative importance and satisfaction with current alternatives. VOC studies typically consist of both qualitative and quantitative research steps and are generally conducted at the start of any new product, process, or service design initiative in order to better understand the customer's wants and needs, and as the key input for new product definition,

Quality Function Deployment Quality function deployment (QFD) a method developed in Japan beginning in 1966 to help transform the voice of the customer into engineering characteristics for a product.Larson et al. (2009). p. 117. Yoji Akao, the original developer, described ...

(QFD), and the setting of detailed design specifications. Much has been written about this process, and there are many possible ways to gather the information –

focus group A focus group is a group interview involving a small number of demographically similar people or participants who have other common traits/experiences. Their reactions to specific researcher/evaluator-posed questions are studied. Focus groups are ...

s, individual interviews,

contextual inquiry Contextual inquiry (CI) is a user-centered design (UCD) research method, part of the contextual design methodology. A contextual inquiry interview is usually structured as an approximately two-hour, one-on-one interaction in which the researcher w ...

, ethnographic techniques, conjoint analysis, etc. All involve a series of structured in-depth interviews, which focus on the customers' experiences with current products or alternatives within the category under consideration. Needs statements are then extracted, organized into a more usable hierarchy, and then prioritized by the customers. It is critical that the

product development In business and engineering, new product development (NPD) covers the complete process of bringing a new product to market, renewing an existing product or introducing a product in a new market. A central aspect of NPD is product design, along wi ...

core team are involved in this process. They must be the ones who take the lead in defining the topic, designing the sample (i.e. the types of customers to include), generating the questions for the discussion guide, either conducting or observing and analyzing the interviews, and extracting and processing the needs statements. According to

APICS APICS, currently known as the Association for Supply Chain Management is a not-for-profit international education organization offering certification programs, training tools, and networking opportunities to increase workplace performance. Fo ...

the definition of VOC is: Actual customer descriptions in words for the functions and features customers desire for goods and services. In the strict definition, as relates to quality function deployment (QFD), the term customer indicates the external customer of the supplying entity.

See also

References

Further reading