Key Points

• VOP is how a process communicates its current progress while meeting customer needs and expectations.
• VOC is communications and expectations given to a company by the customer.
• Paying attention to both voices is paramount for a project to succeed.

Voice of the Process vs. Voice of the Customer isn’t a debate necessarily. In Six Sigma, many voices communicate concepts, ideas, and progress that any organization should pay attention to. Some, like VOP, can inform you of the progress of a process.

However, others like VOC, serve as a beacon into the minds of your customers. With that in mind, let’s look at how these compare.

What is the Voice Of The Process?

Voice Of The Process (VOP) is how a process communicates its performance capability to meet the expectations, wants, and needs of the customer.

The Benefits of the Voice Of The Process

Through analysis of your VOP, you gain insight into what moves you need to make in your business processes in order to meet the wants, expectations, and needs of your customer base.

Understanding the VOP also unites your team around a common purpose. You are also able to create a sense of balance if you are able to align your VOP with the VOC.

How to Calculate the Voice Of The Process

Determining VOP most often comes from the analysis of statistical tools that are common to Lean Six Sigma. A run chart and control chart will give a solid indication as to the stability of your process.

You can tell whether you are exhibiting special cause variation or common cause through a control chart, as well as if you are in control. This information will tell you where your VOP is and if it is possible to achieve harmony between process capability and the expectations of the customer.

What is the Voice Of The Customer?

Voice Of The Customer is the feedback given to businesses by their customers that gives insight into expectations and experiences centered around a product or service. It is also known as a customer translation matrix.

Things it can include are verbatim customer comments that show what they are saying in their own language, what customers say that they need, and their own requirements to have an order filled successfully.

The Benefits of the Voice Of The Customer

Paying attention to the voice of the customer and incorporating it into how you do business helps you to understand exactly who your customers are as well as their expectations and needs. It also helps guide your business into understanding how you can improve your services and products for them.

By honing in on the needs and preferences of the customer, a business is better equipped to deliver targeted and successful experiences. Getting familiar with the needs of the customer makes it easier for a business to navigate brand perception, marketing, and product development.

How to Create a Voice Of The Customer Framework

To create a VOC framework, you will first collect customer feedback from all relevant primary sources, including website analytics, product reviews, and customer surveys. Other sources can be used as well, as long as they help you gather information on how customers talk about your product/service using their own words.

Then, you will take your customer feedback and make it into a grid, either manually or using software. Keep it to a single insight or feedback point per sticky note or column. Next, determine if you can incorporate these insights into customer profiles or personas collaboratively with your team. Also, see if you can use the language and sentiments expressed to spot patterns and trends.

Finally, you can take this information and determine what the next steps will be with your team. Look at how you can tweak your products to optimize customer-centricity.

You can also look at your processes to see where you can make them meet the needs of your company that need to be met to bring a satisfactory product/service to your customer and how it can align with the needs expressed by the voice of the customer.

Voice Of The Process vs. Voice Of The Customer: What’s the Difference?

Having an understanding of as well as listening to the VOP and the VOC are both vital parts of having a successful business. The Voice Of The Process is the capability of your processes to meet the needs and expectations of your customer, while the Voice Of The Customer is the expression in the customer’s own words about their needs, expectations, and preferences.

As is likely obvious, these two voices can often be out of alignment as it can be simply too costly for a business to meet everything that a customer might want or think that they need. A key to doing good business is to find a proper balance between the optimal process capability and the desires of the customer.

Paying Attention to Voices

While we’ve discussed a fair bit around these concepts, it is important to discuss the why. Projects are complicated matters, even the simplest product has a circus around it. It is important for those leading a project to pay attention to all relevant voices.

While it pays off to listen to your customers, you also want to pay attention to things like the business and the processes as well.

Voice Of The Process vs Voice Of The Customer: Who would use A and/or B?

A successful business should be looking at both voices as often as possible. It is important to understand what your processes can realistically handle as well as to know exactly what it is that your customers say they want, not just what you think they want.

A company should strive for continuous improvements to its processes. They want to not only have their processes be as efficient as possible, but also to make sure that they are putting out products that can meet what a customer wants, expects, or needs with a satisfactory frequency of delivery and level of quality.

Choosing Between Voice Of The Process and Voice Of The Customer: Real World Scenarios

As a thank you to its top customers, a golf club manufacturer decides to release a limited-edition club at a deeply discounted rate. This club will be available exclusively to its top-tier customers.

The company launches a survey of these customers to hear, in the Voice Of The Customer, what specifications they are looking for in a top club. A meeting is held to look at the feedback and to see what specifications can be met. This is while keeping the manufacturing of the club in line with the Voice Of The Process.

After some brainstorming, the manufacturer feels confident that they have come up with a design for a top-tier club. It meets many of the specs desired by their customers while matching their current process capability.

Other Useful Tools and Concepts

While we’ve touched on quite a bit today, these aren’t the only tools at your disposal. If you want to get inside the minds of your customers, surveys always help. Learning how to effectively design a customer survey can set your organization up to reap great benefits down the line.

Further, if you’d like to see a transformation in your organization, why not commit to Critical to Quality? This quality-driven approach is a means to shake up and improve everything from employee morale to customer relations.

Summary/Conclusion

You cannot run a successful business without listening to the Voice Of The Customer. Without an understanding of what your customer is looking for in a product or service, you are essentially flying blind.

Being able to meet the needs of your customers means that you will have customers for years to come. Of course, there is not always the capability in your processes to meet all that a customer may desire.

The Voice Of The Process, in these cases, will make itself known loud and clear. The hope, however, that a harmony can be struck between these two voices that can sometimes be out of alignment.

Finding the point where these two voices are in agreement makes your business one to be reckoned with. You’ll have customers who are loyal and passionate about the products or services that you provide.