Six Sigma Yellow Belt: Recap: Section 05

SECTION RECAP   

In this section, you learnt to:   

 Easily define the terms “Needs” and “Requirements”. Although they sound similar,
there is a difference.   
 Learn the technique to translate voices to requirements   
 And we end this section with an activity of evaluating the requirements of your
project   

What are Needs and Requirements?   

Need:   

“Need” is a desire or an expectation of a customer from a given product or service.   

Customers have many stated needs which are often vague and generally are the “wants”
from a product / service.   

For example, a customer buying an air-conditioner will say that he needs an AC which
gives him good cooling. However, you will rarely find a customer who says he needs an
air-conditioner that gives him cooling between 16 to 23 degree celcius.   

Requirement:   

A requirement is an attribute of a product or service which fulfils the needs of the

customer. Customer defines these requirements and are the “musts” of a product or
service.   

Taking the air-conditioner example again, a customer needs an air-conditioner that

gives him good cooling and should not make much noise. So, the requirements will be
to provide an air-conditioner that has a cooling range of 14 to 26 degree celcius and
noise levels to be as low as 2 decibels.   

Translate Voices to Requirements   

While you are involved in the exercise of translating Voices to Requirements, a few key
points to remember are:   

 It’s important for you to ask questions and clarify verbatim comments   
  Probe for deeper understanding and better clarity   
 Translate to terms that make sense to you and your process   
 Review your findings with customers and process participants and   
 Refine and prioritize requirements   

To convert voices to requirements, we use this template. The template has three
columns. In the first column, you will update the exact verbatim comment of the
customer. In the second column, you will update the critical customer criteria. It is an
excerpt from customer’s exact comments articulating the primary need of your
customer. And finally you will write the critical to quality requirement i.e. you will write
the customer’s need in measurable terms.  

Of course you are not going to do this exercise all by yourself. You will work with the
customer and the subject matter experts of your business process in this exercise.   

Here are a few examples:   

Voice of Customer 01:

The voice of customer is, “I hope the call center representative issues my flight tickets
without making any errors”   

The critical customer need is Accuracy – the rep should issue correct flight tickets as per
customer communication.            

The critical to quality requirement is 100% accuracy in issuing of customer flight tickets. 

Voice of Customer 02:

Another customer verbatim comment is “I want my flight tickets to be booked quickly.” 

The critical customer criteria is “Timeliness - time to book flight tickets to be as per
standards set by industry/company”   
And the critical to quality requirement is “All flight reservation calls to have an Average
Handle Time (AHT) of 3 minutes or less”   

Voice of Customer 03:

The customer says, “I am not happy when the customer service agent keeps repeating
the same questions to find my flight itinerary”   

The customer’s primary need is interaction - all information required for finding flight
itinerary is collected in a single interaction   

And the measurable performance requirement is Asking customer to repeat information

should be 0%