Showing posts with label customer service. Show all posts
Showing posts with label customer service. Show all posts

27 July 2013

QFD for cloud computing security, e-learning systems, service industry, FMEA, VOC codification

This continues a preview of the upcoming The 19th International Symposium on QFD (ISQFD) on September 6-7 in Santa Fe, New Mexico USA.

The 2-day symposium welcomes people of all levels QFD, from the beginner to the experienced, people of countries and industries. It is complimentary to the attendees of QFD Green Belt® Certificate Course and QFD Black Belt® Certificate Course  We hope you will join us!

See the previous posts:



QFD and Requirements Prioritization: A Survey on Security Requirements for Cloud Computing

(image - Clound Computing security)Prioritization is an essential task within QFD, and QFD is highly suitable for the development of Cloud Computing (CC) applications where non-functional requirements play a main role. Many of them are security requirements, often the main concern for CC investments. This paper introduces the usage of QFD for Cloud Computing (CC). In this research, CC security requirements were prioritized by pairwise comparison, showing that not all security requirements are equally important. With this finding, the appropriate usage of QFD for CC development will be discussed.

Keywords: QQFD, Requirements Prioritization, Security Requirements, Cloud Computing, GERMANY

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Improving a Learning Management System based on QFD and Service Oriented Architecture (SOA)

(photo - Service Oriented Architecture QFD for e-learning system)This paper reports how to improve web-based Learning Management Systems (LMS) through integration of the elements of Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) and Quality Function Deployment (QFD).
The users of an LMS are typically invisible to the systems developers and administrators, However, understanding the user needs has high priority in any networked learning systems, in order to develop and implement effective virtual learning services that meet diverse expectations of the users. An example will be presented based on a Turkish platformed LMS.

Keywords: Learning Management System, Service, Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), QFD (Quality Function Deployment), TURKEY

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A Study of Service Quality Improvement Using the Theories of Nonverbal Communication, FMEA and QFD

(image - customer service)Study of service industry presents unique challenges because of soft issue measurements such as quality evaluation and service quality.
With this in mind, the authors propose a quality improvement process specifically for service industry. The presentation will include a case study using non-verbal communication, FMEA, and QFD.

Keywords: Service Quality Improvement, QC story, QFD, JAPAN

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A Statistical Engineering Approach to Codifying the Voice of the Customer

(image - HOQ whats and hows)Virtually all design projects involve the collection/processing of the Voice of the Customer to develop a set of requirements to which the producer designs their process/product.Approaches to efficiently and effectively deriving those requirements involve multiple techniques from the fields of market research, quality engineering, design engineering, and inferential statistics. This paper proposes a way to create a logical flow for the Voice of the Customer processing by codifying a series of tools into a linear statistical engineering road-map, and thereby more efficiently populating the House of Quality matrix that uses the "whats" (functions) and "hows" (functional requirements) approach. The exposition is supplemented with a lucid hypothetical example.

Keywords: Voice of Customer, Function Analysis, Kano classification, Analytic Hierarchy Process, Function Requirements, Specifications, Quality Function Deployment, USA



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01 February 2013

What ever happened to customer service?

It seems these days that customer service has gone to the dogs. It used to be we gave our best customers our best service, especially in this service economy! Here are some of my recent experiences.

(photo of restaurant check holder)
Case #1
At a national chain restaurant
, the guest check holder (the leatherette bill holder the waitperson brings to your table) was redesigned. Instead of the conventional, little clear plastic pocket that was the perfect size to hold a credit card, their new design has a simple slit that is cut directly on the holder lining.
    Because there is no pocket seam to hold the card securely in place anymore, once you insert the credit card into the slit, gravity works to slip right down to the bottom of the 10" deep holder, unbeknown to the customer.

    When my waitress brought my credit card slip to sign, the card was nowhere to be seen. After a frantic search of the floor around the table, the card was found stuck inside the lining of the folder where it had slipped down to the bottom. It had a friend, too – another card lost by a previous guest over one week prior! The waitperson's response – "Oh that happens all the time." Well, if it happened more than once, why didn't they fix the problem?

    Case #2
    The new US healthcare laws require that children over 26 have their own health insurance. After transferring our son to his own insurance plan, he enrolled in automatic-pay from the bank account. The first monthly payment was deducted properly, but not the second. After several long phone calls, it turns out the second payment was deducted from someone else's bank in error. How could that be, since it's all done by computer, right?

    In fixing the problem, the insurance company not only removed the incorrect payment for the current month, but they also removed the correct payment for the previous month, meaning my son was now in arrears and at risk of losing his new insurance, even though we had followed all correct steps to transfer and set up automatic payment.

    Furthermore, their customer service representative just reported his account now shows "paid" for the next five months, even though he has not paid past the current month.

    Case #3
    (photo of smart phone roaming)
    "Global roaming" on a mobile phone is essential when traveling overseas. I recently had to activate the plan that gives me a discount on data when traveling abroad, which is important for a smart phone. Well, this took several calls with conflicting information from the various agents at my mobile service provider. One person said it was not necessary, another said it could be done now and I would be all set. A third person actually took me through the steps to change my iPhone settings so it would work. Had this third person not explained the setup to me, the phone would not have worked.

      I'm sure you must have some stories yourself. Why not share them with us?

      If you run a service or support operation, learn how to understand what your customers really want. It will earn you customer loyalty and save you money from multiple mis-handlings by your staff.

      To learn new QFD tools for this, I recommend attending the QFD Green Belt® course. I will be teaching the Orlando course on Feb. 28 - March 1, 2013. You will learn how to apply QFD correctly and most efficiently from the first time.

      The course includes Excel templates which is an economical alternative to buying commercial software that is most likely based on outdated methods. The course has no prerequisites.

      Glenn

      24 January 2013

      “Did you find everything okay?”

      It’s a question consumers hear on a daily basis, whether they’re at a grocery store, electronics store, sporting goods store or basically any kind of retail outlet.  Sometimes our answer is ‘yes’ and other times ‘no,’ but what never seems to change is the outcome from this little encounter.  Anyone reading this blog probably already understands why – because it’s not a service question, it’s a marketing statement.

      (photo - cashier and customer "Did you find everything okay?")Much like “Welcome!” from greeters at many mega stores, this simple line is meant to project a customer-first attitude amongst a store’s employees (and at no additional cost!,) however, unlike a throwaway greeting, this question represents a much greater missed opportunity.

      It is not that the asker (often a cashier) is disingenuous when asking this question, but rather the question itself is problematic and their training does not enable them to deal with the voices of customers they receive.  It is an avenue for feedback, but it almost always leads to a dead end.

      The most immediate problem with this question is that it’s vague and open to multiple interpretations by different customers.  One of the main principles of asking good questions is making sure the respondent actually knows what’s being asked.

      The first possibility that springs to my mind is, “Was the process of finding specific product groups and making selections easily accomplished?” This can be broken down in at least three ways as follows:
      • “Was our inventory organization logical to you?” 
      • “Was our inventory accessible to you?”  and 
      • “Did we provide enough information to help you decide?”  
      There are likely more ways to break down the process of shopping, but it’s worth noting that an online store like Amazon, which has begun to enter the grocery business in some cities, can easily meet these needs without much extra effort through their existing online interface.  This makes it all the more important for today’s brick and mortar grocery stories to satisfy in these areas.

      Another way to interpret the question is, “Do we carry the specific items you’re looking for?”  – either by item type or item brand. This is an issue of supply management and no amount of friendly customer service is going to help the customer get what they want on that current trip.

      There might, however, be an easy and visible method for customer requisitions, which would not only please a customer but also guarantee a return visit when their item arrives.  This is often possible at electronics stores (although the process is far from visible or easy) but is rarely possible in grocery stores.  When a customer’s favorite brand of mustard or bread goes missing and they ask an employee why they no longer carry that item, they’re often met with an “I don’t know” which is neither helpful nor informative. The excruciating weakness of that response is that it could be!

      Even when store representatives ask meaningful questions and their customers provide informative answers, they’re rarely trained with the necessary tools or provided a response channel to turn that voice of customer into helpful information.

      Every time the question is asked, a store is in position to receive useful feedback, both positive and negative, yet that information goes nowhere; it gets stuck with a clerk who doesn’t know who to give it to or a manager who doesn’t want to receive it. “Did you find everything okay?” is a façade of customer-first thinking, and fortunately there’re ways to improve it.

      An easy start is to ask better questions, and to make sure your representatives know how to respond when the customer's answer is “no.”  A working response channel from customer to representative to management is important, however this is dependent on a customer’s time, mood and memory and may lead to skewed results.

      For instance, feedback on message boards tends to occur more when something has gone wrong, rather than when something has gone right.  Questionnaires sent out by grocery stores tend to be focused on their own product or process rather than the customer’s experience (or their desired shopping outcome), and by the time customers receive them, they may not remember all of the relevant details from their shopping encounter.  Furthermore, even if a customer did have difficulty searching through a store’s shelves and a cashier was able to help them, what good would it do if the customer had already waited in line and was about to pay (as they often are when the question is asked)?

      For these reasons, going to the gemba is the most effective way to find customers’ needs in order to improve their shopping experience.  True customer-first thinking means discovering if they “found everything okay” (and everything it entails) before they check out of your store.

      Ken Mazur

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