Voice Of Customer Research Articles

A voice of the customer real-time strategy: An integrated quality function deployment approach

In the era of Industry 4.0, the rapid development of information technology in the last decade has provided new challenges for product improvement by enabling users to give their feedback and sentiments in real time. In this paper, combining with genetic algorithm back propagation neutral network, fuzzy inference method, and entropy-based synthesis evaluation method, we raise a full-process product improvement solution driven by online reviews, from the initial online review collection to the final engineering characteristic prioritization. The proposed novel integrated quality function deployment-based approach adheres to the customer-oriented design principle, allowing manufacturers to strengthen the launched product based on the spontaneously-articulated voice of customer, rather than the traditional expertise. In this way, an off-the-shelf product improvement strategy is available for enterprises, and its special advantages like fast adaptation and real-time responsiveness, would significantly reduce management costs, shorten response time to market dynamics, and enhance customer satisfaction. In addition, a case study in smartphone industry is conducted for illustration, and the results clearly demonstrate the effectiveness and practicability of the treatment.

Text Classification Using Intuitionistic Fuzzy Set Measures—An Evaluation Study

A very important task of Natural Language Processing is text categorization (or text classification), which aims to automatically classify a document into categories. This kind of task includes numerous applications, such as sentiment analysis, language or intent detection, heavily used by social-/brand-monitoring tools, customer service, and the voice of customer, among others. Since the introduction of Fuzzy Set theory, its application has been tested in many fields, from bioinformatics to industrial and commercial use, as well as in cases with vague, incomplete, or imprecise data, highlighting its importance and usefulness in the fields. The most important aspect of the application of Fuzzy Set theory is the measures employed to calculate how similar or dissimilar two samples in a dataset are. In this study, we evaluate the performance of 43 similarity and 19 distance measures in the task of text document classification, using the widely used BBC News and BBC Sports benchmark datasets. Their performance is optimized through hyperparameter optimization techniques and evaluated via a leave-one-out cross-validation technique, presenting their performance using the accuracy, precision, recall, and F1-score metrics.

Online incentives and customer voice: The mediating role of community identification

Online incentives and customer voice: The mediating role of community identification

PENERAPAN METODE QUALITY FUNCTION DEPLOYMENT (QFD) DALAM UPAYA PENINGKATAN KUALITAS PRODUK PADA TOKO SIBAYAK KETAREN ROTAN

Sibayak Ketaren Rotan store is a furniture store that offers home furnishings where synthetic patio chairs are the customer's favorite product. Each customer certainly has a different desire for these products. So that the Sibayak Ketaren Rotan store needs to improve the quality of synthetic patio chairs, but because there is no system capable of managing the process of measuring product quality levels based on customer desires, this creates a problem for the company and has the potential to reduce customer interest in buying the product. Anticipation and solutions to this problem is an application that can measure product quality based on customer wishes (voice of customer) so that companies can improve product quality. Product improvements or enhancements can trigger customer interest in buying the product. The method used to measure product quality in planning the repair of synthetic patio chairs is quality function deployment (QFD). The results of the web-based application produce the highest rise factor report, namely the chair is made of sturdy and impact-resistant materials.

Diminishing Dreams

Diminishing Dreams

Bridging the marketing-finance divide: use of customer voice in managerial decision-making

PurposeThis study aims to provide more insight into how customer voice is captured and used in managerial decision-making at the marketing-finance interface. This study’s focus is on understanding how the customer voice, often communicated through online and social media platforms, is used in high-performing hotels.Design/methodology/approachThis research is based on a case study of four high-performing Irish hotels. For each case, multiple informants, including marketing managers, general managers and finance managers, were interviewed and shadowed. Twenty seven decisions across the four cases were analysed to assess the use of customer voice in managerial decision-making.FindingsSocial media provides a stage that has empowered the customer voice because of the public nature of the interaction and the network effect. Customer voice is incorporated in managerial decision-making in three distinct ways – symbolically as part of an early warning system, for action-oriented operational decisions and to some extent in the knowledge-enhancing role for tactical decisions. While there is a greater appreciation among senior managers and the finance and accounting managers of the importance of customer voice, this study finds clear limits in its utilisation and more reliance on traditional finance and accounting data, especially in strategic decision-making.Research limitations/implicationsThe cases belong to a highly visible open environment of hotels in an industry where customer voice has immediate and strong effects. The findings may not directly apply to industries characterised by a relatively more closed context such as banking or insurance. Moreover, the findings reflect the practices of high-performing hotels and do not necessarily capture the practices used in less successfully operating hotels.Practical implicationsWhile marketers need to enhance their ability to create a narrative that links the customer voice to revenue generation, finance managers also need to develop a skillset and adopt a mindset that appropriately reflects the influential role for customer voice in managerial decision-making.Originality/valueDespite the linkage of marketing performance to business performance, there is limited research on the impact of customer information on managerial decision-making. This research provides insight into how customer voice is considered at the critical marketing-finance interface.

Sentiment analysis from Customer-generated online videos on product review using topic modeling and Multi-attention BLSTM

With the popularity of social websites and mobile applications including Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, etc., online videos shared by customers presenting their thoughts and reviews on products are posted daily in increasing numbers. Such online videos containing Voice of Customer (VOC) are precious for product designers or managers to capture customer sentiment and understand customer preference. For this purpose, we propose a novel method for analyzing customer sentiment from online videos on product review. Firstly, latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) modeling is applied to identify the topics from the online videos after data preprocessing. Then sentiment polarity corresponding to each topic of each speaker in videos can be identified using our newly designed multi-attention bi-directional LSTM (BLSTM(MA)), which can better mine complex relationships among a speaker’s sentiments on different topics. This paper is of great practical value for company managers and researchers to better understand a large number of customer opinions on specific products. To explain the application of this method and prove its effectiveness, two cases respectively on smartphones and several published datasets are developed finally.

KA-VoC Map: Classifying product Key-Attributes from digital Voice-of-Customer

Manufacturers and service providers need new tools to leverage the value of the digital Voice-of-Customer (VoC). These unstructured and disorganized data need ad-hoc approaches for their analysis and interpretation. In this view, this article proposes an innovative methodology aiming at classifying the Key-Attributes (KA) of products and services that may influence customer (dis)satisfaction. The proposed methodology relies on the analysis of digital VoC to extract relevant information for classifying key-attributes. A novel tool called KA-VoC Map is at the basis of the proposed classification. The KA-VoC Map combines two dimensions of analysis: the extent and the way a Key-Attribute is discussed within the digital VoC. The methodology classifies KAs into six categories: obstacles, frictions, indifferent, sleeping beauties, promises, and delights. For each category, the most appropriate management strategy is also suggested. Finally, an empirical study is provided to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.

Halal Meat Exports Enhancement of Pakistan: An Intermediating Role of Global Technical Standards in Quality Function Deployment Model

A lean and sustainable food supply chain is one of the major strategies that businesses all around the world have been trying to adopt to provide the customers quality food and to remain competitive in the global market. Many industrialists, researchers, and economists have focused on food quality because of the high importance of this issue in the global meat markets context. This research was conducted to investigate the mediating role of Global Technical Standards (GTS) on Voice of Customers (VOC) and Exports Enhancement (EE). Halal meat industry and exports of Pakistan were the primary focus by using a mixed methodological approach. Initially, the quality function deployment (QFD) model was generated for the identification of exports requirements and competitive Novelty Analysis. Fourteen actors (experts) of Pakistan halal meat industry had participated in the identification of requirements and standards. Likewise, exporters from nine economies, including the United States of America, Brazil, Australia, Netherlands, Poland, Spain, India, Canada, and Pakistan, participated in Competitive Novelty Analysis. Secondly, 250 responses were generated from Pakistan’s halal meat industry on a five-point Likert scale. The findings of this study show a significant relationship between Voice of Customers (VOC) and Global Technical Standards (GTS). It was further highlighted that Global Technical Standards mediate the relationship between issues in exports and Exports Enhancement (EE) strategies.

Service quality in outpatient teaching hospital pharmacies based on the SERVQUAL model: An assessment in the south of Iran.

The present study assessed the quality of services in the outpatient teaching hospital pharmacies affiliated to Shiraz University of Medical Sciences, Iran, in 2019 according to the SERVQUAL model to identify areas for improvement. The research was cross-sectional, descriptive and analytical. Patients referred to the outpatient teaching hospital pharmacies affiliated to Shiraz University of Medical Sciences formed the study population. The sample size was 300 people chosen through the stratified sampling method proportional to the size as well as the convenience sampling method. The modified SERVQUAL questionnaire developed by Mohammadi et al. (in Eftekhar Ardabili H, Akbari Haghighi F, Mahmoudi M, Poorreza A. Evaluation of service quality based on the patients' expectations and perceptions in Zanjan hospitals. J Sch Public Health Inst Public Health Res. 2003;2:71-84) was used for data collection. Data analysis was performed by SPSS 24.0 using statistical tests of paired t-test, independent t-test and ANOVA. A P-value of <0.05 showed statistical significance. Moreover, EXCEL 2013 was used to draw the graphs. The results showed that the participants had higher expectations regarding the quality of pharmacy services in all six dimensions compared to their perceptions (negative gaps) and the difference was statistically significant (P <0.05). The largest gap was in the 'access' dimension (G = -0.44 ± 1.15) and the smallest one was in the 'reliability' dimension (G = -0.21 ± 1.30). Also, the mean of overall quality gap, among the patients' demographic characteristics, had a significant relationship only with having supplementary health insurance coverage (P = 0.03). It seems that hospital managers and technical managers of pharmacies should make several interventions in the field of staff empowerment and training empathy and teamwork skills. Also, strengthening the system of receiving quick and easy feedback from patients and paying attention to the voice of customers can pave the way for hospital managers and technical managers of pharmacies to enhance the service quality with subsequence reduction of the existing gaps.

Rapid development of an integrated remote programming platform for neuromodulation systems through the biodesign process

Treating chronic symptoms for pain and movement disorders with neuromodulation therapies involves fine-tuning of programming parameters over several visits to achieve and maintain symptom relief. This, together with challenges in access to trained specialists, has led to a growing need for an integrated wireless remote care platform for neuromodulation devices. In March of 2021, we launched the first neuromodulation device with an integrated remote programming platform. Here, we summarize the biodesign steps taken to identify the unmet patient need, invent, implement, and test the new technology, and finally gain market approval for the remote care platform. Specifically, we illustrate how agile development aligned with the evolving regulatory requirements can enable patient-centric digital health technology in neuromodulation, such as the remote care platform. The three steps of the biodesign process applied for remote care platform development are: (1) Identify, (2) Invent, and (3) Implement. First, we identified the unmet patient needs through market research and voice-of-customer (VOC) process. Next, during the concept generation phase of the invention step, we integrated the results from the VOC into defining requirements for prototype development. Subsequently, in the concept screening phase, ten subjects with PD participated in a clinical pilot study aimed at characterizing the safety of the remote care prototype. Lastly, during the implementation step, lessons learned from the pilot experience were integrated into final product development as new features. Following final product development, we completed usability testing to validate the full remote care system and collected preliminary data from the limited market release experience. The VOC data, during prototype development, helped us identify thresholds for video quality and needs priorities for clinicians and patients. During the pilot study, one subject reported anticipated remote–care-related adverse events that were resolved without sequelae. For usability analysis following final product development, the failure rates for task completion for both user groups were about 1%. Lastly, during the initial 4 weeks of the limited market release experience, a total of 858 remote care sessions were conducted with a 93% success rate. Overall, we developed a remote care platform by adopting a user-centric approach. Although the system intended to address pre-COVID19 challenges associated with disease management, the unforeseen overlap of the study with the pandemic elevated the importance of such a system and an innovative development process enabled us to advance a patient-centric platform to gain regulatory approval and successfully launch the remote care platform to market.

Packaging development of dehydrated strawberry using quality function deployment for e-commerce

Dehydrated strawberry is product development from strawberry fresh fruit to improve, increase the shelf-life and value of the product. During the Covid-19 pandemic, shopping lifestyle has changed gradually into online buying through e-commerce that was growth significantly, it must be followed by producer to adapt and adopt the situation especially for purchasing decisions, while customers tend to choose products based on the packaging appearance. This study aimed to determine attributes of the packaging and technical needs for producer selling preparation of dehydrated strawberry in e-commerce based on customer needs. The method in this study that has proven effective in fulfilling customer needs is Quality Function Deployment (QFD) in product planning phase. QFD analysis begins with filtering Voice of Customer (VoC) using open questionnaire then at the stage of customer importance level and product performance using closed questionnaire, then compiled into attributes of customer needs. Technical requirements were brainstormed using discussion with local sellers on e-commerce. Two attributes with the highest priority to be realized is product information on the packaging is easy to read and understand and product-related information fully listed on the outer product packaging and the highest priority for the technical needs is addition of secondary packaging.

Mining voice of customers and employees in insurance companies from online reviews: a text analytics approach

PurposeAlthough insurance companies contribute to about $600 billion of the US gross domestic product and employ 2.7 million people, the overall perception of clients and workers employed in this domain is poor. To the best of our knowledge, this study is the first to propose recommendations to improve the service quality of insurance companies using the voice of customers and employees that are available online.Design/methodology/approachThe proposed methodology consists of four stages: extracting text reviews posted by employees and customers, reviewing feedback using bigrams and trigrams, determining topics and identifying quality-associated managerial recommendations using the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats (SWOT) and root cause analysis techniques.FindingsOur results indicate that primary causes for client dissatisfaction are improper client assistance services, inefficient claims processing, issues related to payments/fees and unresponsive ancillary services. Offering different types of payment methods, immediate car replacement policy and features such as smartphone applications are commended very well. The major reasons for workforce frustrations include long and overly complex training, lack of social events and incentive programs. Coworkers, workplace facilities, clean work environment and other amenities are shown to have a positive impact on employees' satisfaction level.Originality/valueTo the best of our knowledge, this study is the first to propose recommendations to improve the service quality of insurance companies using the voice of customers and employees that are available online. The proposed quality-related insights can assist insurance companies in improving the outlook of their workers as well as customers.

Integrating human knowledge into artificial intelligence for complex and ill-structured problems: Informed artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence (AI) has been gaining significant attention in various fields to reduce costs, increase revenue, and improve customer satisfaction. AI can be particularly beneficial in enhancing decision-making processes for complex and ill-structured problems that lack transparency and have unclear goals. Most AI algorithms require labeled datasets to learn the problem characteristics, draw decision boundaries, and generalize. However, most datasets collected to solve complex and ill-structured problems do not have labels. Additionally, most AI algorithms are opaque and not easily interpretable, making it hard for decision-makers to obtain model insights for developing effective solution strategies. To this end, we examine existing AI paradigms, mainly symbolic AI (SAI) guided by human domain knowledge and data-driven AI (DAI) guided by data. We propose an approach called informed AI (IAI) by integrating human domain knowledge into AI to develop effective and reliable data labeling and model explainability processes. We demonstrate and validate the use of IAI by applying it to a social media dataset comprised of conversations between customers and customer support agents to construct a solution – IAI defect explorer (I-AIDE). I-AIDE is utilized to identify product defects and extract the voice of customers to help managers make decisions to improve quality and enhance customer satisfaction.

Customer-oriented product design using an integrated neutrosophic AHP & DEMATEL & QFD methodology

With the increasing product variety, companies aim to become better than their competitors by providing a superior product developed with a customer-oriented product design approach and a quality strategy. In order to achieve this, companies should well understand customer expectations and quickly be able to convert these expectations to technical characteristics. Since the expectations consist of mostly subjective judgments, this evaluation process contains vagueness and impreciseness. A triplet represents the uncertainty in subjective judgments: the degrees of belongingness or Truthiness (T), non-belongingness or Falsity (F), and indeterminacy (I). For this reason, in this paper, a neutrosophic Quality Function Deployment (QFD) methodology based on neutrosophic AHP and neutrosophic DEMATEL is developed and applied to the design of a car seat. In this methodology, the weighting of customer requirements is performed by neutrosophic AHP. The relationships among the technical characteristics are determined by neutrosophic DEMATEL for the customer-oriented product design, considering both impreciseness in the data and indeterminacy of the decision-makers. In other words, the contribution of this paper is that the proposed methodology provides better integration of the voice of customers into technical characteristics through a practical fuzzy multi-criteria decision analysis. Based on the results, it is revealed that seat height is the most important technical characteristic, followed by vertical travel range and horizontal travel range. Moreover, validity and verification of the proposed methodology have been tested with other methods presented in the literature. Sensitivity analyses have been carried out to show the flexibility of the given decisions under different cases. Lastly, possible implications on theoretical and managerial aspects have been discussed.

A Statistical Case Study for the Components of Spiritual and Charismatic Leadership in Reverse Engineering based on Voice of Customer in Iran Khodro Company

Nowadays, vending is the most important pillar of a production set. The positive and significant points of the manufactured parts are attained by interviewing with the customer, sending a questionnaire to the customer, testing the market, investigating the quality and reliability of new products, probing the reports and product quality of competitors. Aimed at predicting the type of leadership in reverse engineering, based on “Voice of Customer” (VOC), between the Iran Khodro Company’s (IKC) managers (case study of Peugeot 405 brake pump shell), the present study was conducted. Using descriptive-correlation research method, about 90 managers were randomly selected in several categories according to gender, age and years of service, proportional to the size of each category. Three questionnaires of “Oregon and Kanowski Organizational Citizenship Behavior” (OKOCB), “Fry Spiritual Leadership” (FSL), and researcher-made “Charismatic Leadership” (CL) were utilized to collect the research data. To measure the reliability rate using Cronbach's alpha coefficient, this item was obtained for all three questionnaires of the OKOCB, FSL and CL behavior (α = 0.92, 0.81 and 0.85) respectively. Collecting the data, they were analyzed using multiple regression analysis and based on the research hypotheses. The results indicated that there is a positive and significant relationship between the dimensions of SL and organizational citizenship behavior, and also between the CL and the organizational citizenship behavior. The results of structural equation modeling also showed that SL with a path coefficient 0.7 is able to affect overall quality management (t ≥ 1.96, p≤ 0.05).

DMAIC methodology for achieving public satisfaction with health departments in various districts of Punjab and optimizing CT scan patient load in urban city hospitals.

The health care delivery system in Pakistan is in a process of rapid growth, and it consists of public and private sectors. The provincial government is preliminarily responsible for providing health care facilities within its province except in federally administered areas. In Pakistan, there are three tiers of governmental healthcare delivery systems, which comprise government, semi-government, and parastatal organizations. The purpose of this study is to understand the rapid increase in influx of patients in major city hospitals of the Punjab province. The reasons for patient flow towards the major city areas can vary, but our point of focus is mainly on those patients who are prescribed to get a computed tomography (CT) scan done for better diagnosis and early treatment, including but not limited to roadside accident cases. The study targets the define, measure, analyze, improve and control (DMAIC) problem solving approach to assess the potential cause of CT patient flow and the challenges that the health department is facing to cater to such a patient niche and process while minimizing the congestion in city government hospitals. The approach in this study summarizes with numerous quality tools like Voice of Customer (VOC) which is customer feedback, Customer Output Process Input and Supplier (COPIS) processes use for high-level process map to know what your customer value, Approver Resource Member Interested (ARMI) chart which is use to analyze the stakeholders on management of the project, evaluation with the help of fishbone diagram and house of quality, and for process improvement methodology we use the team brainstorming technique and the kaizen 5-why technique. The technique came up with an idea of a public-private partnership (PPP) project—partnership between public agency and private firm, as the health care industry in Punjab province is going through budgetary issues. In a PPP project, the Government will allocate the space to a private firm to build the facility on their own and provide quality service for CT scan diagnosis to the public of Punjab. The study identified the top 10 critical factors that the patients have expected from the government to be provided on priority. The Kaizen process improvement methodology has been adopted to provide the possible solution of government budgetary issues. The set of tools in this study can be adopted by other PPP projects to enhance the project performance.

Practical application of six SIGMA methodology to reduce defects in a Pakistani manufacturing company

All over the world six sigma is being adopted as a quality improvement approach towards zero defects. Unfortunately, the adoption of six sigma methodology in manufacturing companies is very rare in developing countries due to various challenges. This study demonstrates the practical use of the six sigma Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve and Control (DMAIC) cycle by conducting a case study at a manufacturing company in Pakistan. The potential problem was the external leakage defect in the refrigerator during its production stage. The objective of this study was to improve the process by adopting six sigma DMAIC approach to identify and eliminate the root causes that produce defects in the final product. Project charter, Pie chart, Bar chart of faults, Suppliers Input Process Output (SIPOC), Voice of Customer (VOC) and flow process map were used to define the problem, its scope and process routing. Pareto chart was used to identify sub defects and sigma level was calculated for the existing process. Feed rate, capillary action of filler material, cleanliness, visual inspection and unsuitable heat input were the major causes of external leakage. Cause and effect matrix was used to rank the identified causes. Further, design of experiment (DoE) was performed to improve the process by conducting different alterations in the parameters. In order to control the process, failure mode and effect analysis (FMEA) sheet was prepared to sustain the process improvements. The FMEA control plan needed to be revised at specific time intervals to attain continuous process improvement. This six sigma DMAIC cycle produced a 30% overall reduction of external leakage defect and service call rate (SCR) was improved with lower complaints from customers.

Exploring Voice of Customers to Chatbot for Customer Service with Sentiment Analysis

Abstract. Chatbots have been widely employed across a wide variety of companies and industries, from small- and medium-sized businesses to large corporations, and from e-commerce to financial institutions. Although chatbots have proven to be far more efficient and quicker than human agents, they do not always provide customers with a satisfactory experience because they lack a personal touch. Customer issues are often left unresolved and many are unsatisfied with chatbot services. This is unfavorable for firms that use chatbots for customer services as this jeopardizes their relationship with valued consumers. Thus, customer input is essential to streamline the product innovation process. This study uses a hybrid method involving lexicon-based TextBlob and logistic regression techniques to identify the sentiments of consumers toward chatbots for customer services based on user-generated content on Twitter. The results show that although people generally have positive encounters with chatbots, the gap between positive and negative sentiments is relatively small. This research provides insights that businesses can use to improve chatbot technology based on the voice of the customer to provide users with higher quality customer services in the future, especially since unsatisfied customers could be a threat to a business’s performance. Keywords: chatbot, customer services, sentiment analysis, social media mining, voice of customers.

Voices of Customers and the Relationship with Success

One of the characteristics of success in a company is to mature its requirements every time by observing in detail the particular needs of customers over time, revitalizing the application of business strategies, in order to comply with sales indicators, the increase in market share and the increase in customer satisfaction. In this way, the development of new products is favored, through the use of new materials, the participation of expert personnel immersed between suppliers and an integrative leadership. The case study used was descriptive, applying the focus group technique quantitative, the variables analysis were performed. This work offers a similar result in a project to establish a company in the automotive sector, which in the last five years has been able to improve its business practices, becoming a point of interest for multinational companies in terms of developing high quality products, which meet international standards and also manages to export assets to other countries in the region, successfully. It is a sector of wide growth not only in Colombia but in the region, where despite the fact that adequate process management has been working, it is necessary to increase policies focused on improving the management of suppliers under the guidance of the supply chain orientation management for the improvement of organizational performance satisfying stakeholders.