Transforming Manufacturing Strategies Using Voice Of The Customer
By Louis Columbus

Competing for customers has never been more challenging, intensely focused, or costly for manufacturers globally. Instead of relying on plunging prices or continually adding in product line extensions to marginally increase a given products' market size and potential sales, manufacturers must get back to what made many of them successful to begin with, and that is concentrating on knowing the unmet needs of customers and responding to them with innovative products and solutions better than any competitor globally.

Customer interviews are a common mechanism for gathering the voice of the customer. Customer interviews are usually conducted one-on-one with an individual customer or with a small number of people from the same business or family unit. They provide an opportunity to get in-depth information from a single customer. The interviews are used to understand: