Voice of Customer

Voice of Customer is a term used in process, product and service improvement that seeks to describe the desires, objectives and aversions of the customer. These inputs are the driving force for product and service improvement.

The reason voice of customer is so important within the context of Lean and operational excellence is the idea that the idealized customer is only willing to pay for things they value, and waste and variation are never something any customer would value.

Besides the traditional view of customers as the consumers of products and services, within any value stream it is possible to view customers as any process or function that receives inputs from any other process or function. Incorporating this concept into any process improvement activity delivers useful insights for system optimization.

There are many methods for obtaining the voice of the customer input including surveys, focus groups, market research, etc.

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