Using Voice of the Customer in Six Sigma

Course details

Customers are at the heart of all Six Sigma initiatives, and this focus on customers is what makes Six Sigma an outstanding organizational performance improvement program. The voice of the customer (VOC) is a Six Sigma strategy used to capture requirements and feedback from the customer and to meet their requirements. Voice of the customer is a critical input at every stage of the Six Sigma DMAIC (Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, and Control) process, particularly at the Define stage. At this stage, critical customer requirements are collected, measured, and translated into actionable goals using a number of tools. Using VOC begins with defining Six Sigma goals for collecting and analyzing customer requirements. For this, the Six Sigma team must identify various customer segments especially the ones most concerned with the project. Then the team needs to identify and select the most effective methods for collecting customer feedback and requirements. From there, customer requirements are translated into measurable, actionable project goals. This course examines how an organization uses the voice of the customer to define the problem at hand and to set the direction of its Six Sigma efforts. It introduces the tasks associated with the voice of the customer strategy and some general criteria for segmenting customers on Six Sigma projects. It also discusses some common customer data collection methods such as surveys, interviews, and focus groups and looks at how to ensure validity and reliability in data collection. In addition, the course illustrates how tools such as Kano analysis, critical-to-quality (CTQ) analysis, and quality function deployment (QFD) are used to translate customer data into critical customer requirements and measurable, actionable goals for the Six Sigma team. This course is aligned with the ASQ Certified Six Sigma Black Belt certification exam and is designed to assist learners as part of their exam preparation. It builds on foundational knowledge that is taught in SkillSoft's ASQ-aligned Green Belt curriculum.

• match the voice of the customer (VOC) strategy tasks to their descriptions
• identify how to perform different aspects of a customer-segmentation analysis in a given scenario
• identify examples of the three main customer-segmentation criteria
• recognize considerations associated with gathering customer data
• determine the most appropriate customer data collection