"If you worship at the throne of the 'voice of the customer,' you'll get only incremental advances." - Joseph Morone

I am about to participate in yet another "voice of the customer" session at my day job.  Through the magic of Six Sigma and Value Analysis, we are going to convert the emotive-based satisfaction of our customers into quantifiable numerical values.  These conversions are highly subjective in practice.  But, for some reason, the power of the number/metric seems to lend a degree of "seriousness" into what we are doing.  Six Sigma is like that.  It really takes the fun and imagination out of the event.  It reminds me of the sign that used to hang in Albert Einstein's office:

"Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted"

The main problem with "voice of the customer" is that the customers are sometimes wrong.  <GASP>  I know...that's a hard one to rationalize after all these years of being told the opposite.  They also don't always know how to articulate what they need, especially with IT-related products.  Additionally, it is hard for customers to visualize potential improvements.  Remember the old Henry Ford comment,

"If I had asked my customers what they wanted, they'd have asked for a faster horse"

Back the "voice of the customer" sessions...I will play along...because I really have no choice.  But, being the disrupter and renegade that I am, I have also decided to run a parallel exercise with our customers.  Better to ask for forgiveness than for permission I always say.  To that end, I have gathered a small team of like-minded disrupters and renegades to conduct "observational analysis sessions."  Now that sounds serious and professional doesn't it?  Hopefully that name will throw off and distract the "value engineers" from poking around too much.  "Observational Analysis Sessions" are designed to do the following:

• Shadow a customer for a full work day and watch how they use our products and services
• Observe where the customer struggles using our products and services
• Observe the "work-arounds" that the customer has developed to deal with the short-comings, missing features or other problems with our products and services
• Inquire about things that may make their lives easier or more productive
• Inquire about things that frustrate them in their work, and not just with our products and services, but overall

Following these "Observational Analysis Sessions," we'll start identifying the gaps between existing and hoped for products and services.  We'll brainstorm potential solutions.  We'll go back and ask our customers to participate in additional idea generation sessions to refine the ideas.  Then, we'll start prototyping some of our selected ideas and ask the customers to try them out.  Finally, we'll work together with our customers to design and build the products and services that help them be more efficient.  True partnership.

Notice what never occurs during this entire process?  That's right...there isn't a single numerical calculation that occurs.  Okay, in all honesty, we'll have to insert some metrics at the end to prove that the change really did improve our customer's lives in the end.  Otherwise, its just partner, observe, generate solutions, prototype some promising solutions and implement.  Creativity and innovation at its finest.

Have a Great Week!!!