The Wow

A refresher on a quality
tool, concept or method
Factor
Use the Kano model to identify what your customers really want
by David Muncaster

It’s amazing how much the digital age customer, and the questions weren’t FIGURE 1
has changed the way organizations specific enough. We asked, “What is
view and react to customers.
A commonly held view used to be that
good customer service to you?” They
said faster service, but we neglected
Kano model
if a customer experienced poor service, to ask how fast: 10 minutes? Five Total Delighters
he or she would tell about 11 people. With minutes? One minute? We had no satisfaction and exciters,
“Wows”
Satisfaction
the explosion of social media, however, idea whether we could meet their

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axis

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these comments are more far-reaching expectations.

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ti ity
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than ever before. What we should have done is use Ex al
qu
al
A good example is “United Breaks the Kano model (Figure 1), which uses rm Wants,
No “Satisfiers”
Guitars,” a YouTube video that went viral the data collected by the VOC to help
Didn’t do Did it
about a musician whose guitar was bro- classify your business. The model it at all very well
ken on a United flight. When the airline outlines three aspects of customer sat- Achievement ality
d qu Musts,
refused to compensate him, he created isfaction: expected quality (musts or axis
p ecte “Dissatisfiers”
Ex
an amusing song deriding the airline. “dissatisfiers”), normal quality (wants

Within days, the video garnered hun-
dreds of thousands of hits (and currently
is at over 18 million views), which created
a PR nightmare for United. It is a prime
example of bad service in the internet age.
Disasters like this can be avoided using
voice of the customer (VOC). VOC is criti-
cal to knowing your customers and driving
changes—in quality or customer satis-
faction—to meet their needs. However,
sometimes when collecting VOC, organi-
zations don’t provide the right mechanism
for feedback, ask the right questions or
interpret the information correctly.
For example, I recently attended a Six
Sigma training course where attendees
split up into two groups for a simulation.
The group I was in formed a service
provider and the other group its custom-
ers. The first round was a disaster. As
the service provider, we took forever to
deliver, there were errors in the paper-
work, operational “costs” skyrocketed and
customer satisfaction was low.
We had an opportunity to ask our
customers follow-up questions about our
service before the second round, but it
was unconstructive. We incorrectly asked
questions that would help us, not the
Ti
m
e
or “satisfiers”) and exciting quality
(delighters and exciters, or “wows”).
Musts are what customers expect Total
dissatisfaction
all the time. In the case of ecom-
merce, those might be: correct
spelling, quick websites, proper product images and a variety of payment options. If
these basic needs aren’t met, customers become extremely dissatisfied.
Wants are standard characteristics that increase or decrease satisfaction by their
degrees. In ecommerce, for example, a customer’s basic need might be for the website
to accept a variety of payment methods. But if the customer must fill out three pages
of forms to pay, that certainly will decrease his or her satisfaction. Usually, wants are
the easiest to collect because customers will readily tell you if you’re not fast enough,
cheap enough or easy enough.
Delighters are unexpected features that customers didn’t know they wanted, but
are excited about. Delighters set you apart as the supplier of choice or a trendsetter.
Having a website that remembers your last transactions or cross-references your
purchases for cheaper options, for example, might be delighters.
It takes a deep understanding of VOC to really uncover delighters, but they are the
key to creating a competitive advantage.
David Muncaster is the national manager, continuous
improvement, for Staples Business Advantage Canada in
Vancouver, British Columbia. He earned an associate degree
in quality management from the British Columbia Institute
of Technology in Vancouver. A past chair of ASQ Vancouver
Section, he is an ASQ-certified Six Sigma Black Belt and a senior
member of ASQ.

56 QP January 2019 ❘ qualityprogress.com