Commentary from Jeff Thompson - PDMA Pittsburgh Chapter President, Director Innovation Programs at McKesson Automation
Thanks to all who came out last night. We had great attendance - about 40 people - for the recent PDMA
Pittsburgh Innovation Forum: “Hijacking the Voice of the Customer”.
In addition to being a great presenter Gerry
Katz brought significant personal hands on experience to the table.
He certainly made me ponder many items I see us doing (or I do) and asking
why? why not? and just considering the limits. A few of the notes I scratched for myself, sound bites if
you will, were:
“Products inspired by customers”
What a neat
quote and clearly a well executed VOC effort can lead to this. But that
quote makes me pause when I use it to evaluate the products around me.
Are those products truly inspired by customers or are the inspired by us?
I think this quote could provide some great focus for development teams.
I’m wondering just how to use it.
“Understand the needs (jobs to be done) in the VOC execution”
It sure sounds simple and I think most of us would agree
with it, but would reviewing VOC results demonstrate this was
accomplished? It seems like a good test to me. I’m using
this!
“Frequent mentions (during VOC) don’t define priority or importance; they simply represent top of mind”
I could not
agree more but this is a easy trap to fall into. It might be good to keep
this awareness in sight as we evaluate the VOC results; it seems an especially
easy trap to fall into when using QFD
