Mtg' 10: Identifying Customer Needs

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Mtg. 10 Identifying Customer Needs

• Chapter 4 Ulrich and Eppinger

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Identify Customer Needs
Concept Development Phase 1
Mission Statement
After Ulrich and Eppinger, Exhibit 2-3
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Identifying Customer Needs

• Goals
• Ensure product is focused on customer needs
• Identify both explicit and latent/hidden needs
• Provide fact base for justifying product
  specifications
• Create archival record of the needs activity
• Ensure no critical customer need overlooked
• Team understands customer needs

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Identifying Customer Needs

• The process
• Gather raw data from customers
• Interpret raw data in terms of customer needs
• Organize needs into a hierarchy (primary,
  secondary, etc.)
• Establish relative importance of each need
• Reflect on the results and the process

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Identifying Customer Needs

• Gather raw data from customers
• Interviews
• Focus groups
• Observing product in use

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Meeting With The Customers
Proposed Outcomes
Prioritized Outcomes
Prioritized Design Variables
Validated Outcomes New Outcomes
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How Many Customers?
100
80
60
Percent of Needs Identified
40
20
0
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
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Number of Respondents or Groups
From Griffin, Abbie and John R. Hauser. The
Voice of the Customer, Marketing Science. vol.
12, no. 1, Winter 1993.
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Indirect Methods of Identifying Customer Needs

• New Terms
• Compensatory Behavior
• Ethnography
• Context-based research
• Ethnography lite

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Compensatory Behavior

• Consumers adapt their behavior to compensate for
  shortcomings in the product
• Examples
• Using a computer keyboard wrist pad to prevent
  wrist injury
• Putting straps on eyeglasses to keep them from
  falling
• Putting a brightly-colored tag on your bag for
  quick identification on the luggage carousel
• How to find it? Look for the duct tape!

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Ethnography Lite

• Capturing behaviors, patterns, lifestyles in
  context instead of with surveys, interviews, and
  focus groups
• Many people dont know what they want and are
  poor reporters of their own behavior
• Examples of ethnography
• Rubbermaid Inc. sent 15 two-person teams to
  consumers' homes to observe home-storage
  practices, and the group returned with 300
  new-product ideas in just three days
• Steelcase, observing interactions in team spaces,
  created a whole new office design-space concept
• Whirlpool designed a new controls strategy after
  observing users actions
• Johnson Controls uses video ethnography in
  automobiles to capture slices of lifestyle that
  help link products with behavior in the
  automobile

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Visual Information Example Book Bag Design
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Visual Information Example Book Bag Design

• See how the leather on the bottom of the bag is
  all scratched its ugly.

When Im standing in line at the cashier trying
to find my checkbook while balancing my bag on my
knee, I feel like a stork.
This bag is my life if I lose it Im in big
trouble.
Theres nothing worse than a banana thats been
squished by the edge of a textbook.
I never use both straps on my knapsack I just
sling it over one shoulder.
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Identifying Customer Needs

• Interpret raw data in terms of customer needs
• Express need as what, not how
• Express the need as specifically as the raw data
• Use positive, not negative, phrasing
• Express the need as an attribute to the product
• Avoid the words must and should

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Customer Needs ExampleCordless Screwdrivers
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Five Guidelines for Writing Needs Statements
Why dont you put protective shields around the
battery contacts?
The screwdriver battery contacts are covered by a
plastic sliding door.
The screwdriver battery is protected from
accidental shorting.
I drop my screwdriver all the time.
The screwdriver is rugged.
The screwdriver operates normally after repeated
dropping.
It doesnt matter if its raining, I still need
to work outside on Saturdays.
The screwdriver is not disabled by the rain.
The screwdriver operates normally in the rain.
Id like to charge my battery from my cigarette
lighter.
An automobile cigarette lighter adapter can
charge the screwdriver battery.
The screwdriver battery can be charged from an
automobile cigarette lighter.
I hate it when I dont know how much juice is
left in the batteries of my cordless tools.
The screwdriver should provide an indication of
the energy level of the battery.
The screwdriver provides an indication of the
energy level of the battery.
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Identifying Customer Needs

• Organize needs into a hierarchy
• (one method)
• Print each need on separate card/post-it
• Eliminate redundant statements
• Group cards according to similar needs met
• Choose a label for each group
• Create supergroups (2 to 5 groups) where possible
• Review / edit the organized need statements

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Identifying Customer Needs

• Establish relative importance of each need
• Develop a weighting system for customer needs
• Rely on consensus of the team based on their
  experience with customers
• Or
• Use further customer surveys

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Identifying Customer Needs

• Reflect on the results and the process
• Are results consistent with results of teams
  interaction with the customers?
• Have all important types of customers in target
  market been interacted with?
• What do we know that we didnt know when we
  started? Any surprises?
• How can we improve the process?

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Differing Views of Customer Needs
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Kano Diagram for Customer Satisfaction
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Expected, Requested, and Surprising Performance
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Establish Hierarchy, Relative Importance
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Summary Identifying Customer Needs

• The process
• Gather raw data from customers
• Interpret raw data in terms of customer needs
• Organize needs into a hierarchy (primary,
  secondary, etc.)
• Establish relative importance of each need
• Reflect on the results and the process

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Caveats

• Capture What, Not How.
• Meet customers in the use environment.
• Collect visual, verbal, and textual data.
• Props will stimulate customer responses.
• Interviews are more efficient than focus groups.
• Interview all stakeholders and lead users.
• Develop an organized list of need statements.
• Look for latent needs.
• Survey to quantify tradeoffs.
• Make a video to communicate results.

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End

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Writing Needs Statements
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Writing Needs Statements
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Writing Needs Statements
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Writing Needs Statements
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Writing Needs Statements
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