Have you ever put all your effort into doing something well—at work, at home or with your partner—only to find the other person dissatisfied? This happens when we start working without truly understanding our customer’s needs.

As mentioned in the previous article, Who Is Our Customer? Critical-to-Quality Parameters (CTQs) , CTQ stands for “critical to quality.” In any product, process or service, a CTQ is a characteristic that meets a key requirement for the customer or process.

The most important attribute of CTQs is that they are translated directly from the voice of the customer (VOC), giving us a complete picture of customer needs.

Defining CTQs involves three stages. Let us start with the first:

Stage 1. Identify Potential Customers

First, understand what “customer” means. Customers are the recipients of the work output produced at the end of a process or service.

An important consideration is that you cannot, and should not, treat all customers the same or give their needs and expectations equal priority. Segment the market by profitability, risk, region or complexity to help establish priorities.

Your project goals and risks can help prioritize which customers to focus on during problem definition and resolution.

Stage 2. Listen to the Voice of the Customer

There are many ways to listen to customers: call centers, relationships between brand managers and customers, annual surveys and more. The resulting data can help define CTQs.

Before analyzing the data, it is important to understand:

• How it was generated
• Why it was generated
• Which questions were asked
• Which customers were involved
• How long information collection took.

Voice-of-the-customer information can do more than identify factors critical to customer satisfaction. It can also help us:

• Decide which products or services to discontinue
• Identify critical features for new products or services
• Make business processes proactive
• Decide where to focus our efforts.

Accurate VOC information helps us understand both what customers want and how they use our products and services.

Stage 3. Identify Customer CTQs

A Lean Six Sigma tool used to organize and prioritize customer CTQs is called “customer needs mapping.” It translates the voice of the customer into specific customer needs. The next article will explain this tool in more detail.

These three steps help us define customer expectations clearly.

If you have a question or comment, contact us or leave a comment in the forum.

Do you already have a clear idea of what your customer wants?