Customer Expectations and the Kano Model by Anticlue

In business as you decide how and what you are going to execute, understanding and prioritizing your customer’s requirements and expectations is key. Customers’ expectations are normally expressed as a range and all defects are not all equally detrimental

In Six Sigma, the process of comprehending this range is call Kano analysis. The Kano model focuses a company’s improvement efforts by categorizing its customers’ requirements into three categories: dissatisfiers, satisfiers, and delighters.

Dissatisfiers are customer requirements that must be met because the customer expects them as a regular part of the package. If an IT department supports systems, Microsoft patches, and software upgrades must be done. Having the latest version of the system is a basic customer expectation. If these basic expectations are not met, then the customer is dissatisfied. Dissatisfiers are taken for granted; it is only when they are absent that the customer takes notice and becomes dissatisfied. But even if these dissatisfiers are met, that does not mean the customer will be satisfied to any great degree. Companies must meet all desires that are dissatisfiers to stay in business. If the company is not meeting these desires, it needs to focus its improvement efforts on providing the dissatisfiers first.

Satisfiers are customer requirements that are not necessarily expected as a regular part of the package, but the more satisfiers there are, the more the customer is satisfied. Customers can live without satisfiers, and satisfiers don't typically excite customers, but they help retain customers and keep them happy. Customers usually tell other people about a product or service's satisfiers. Customers do not tend to notice the inclusion of satisfiers as much as they do the exclusion of dissatisfiers. Nevertheless, customers may compare a product's satisfiers to those of a competing product.

Delighters are not expected by the customer, so they do not cause dissatisfaction when they are not part of the package. Delighters excite customers because they exceed their expectations, that is, they are breakthrough features.

Understanding each category of customer requirements is a key prerequisite to performing Kano analysis. Once you understand these categories, you will be able to apply them to your own organization's product or service.

There are four steps that help Six Sigma teams determine the appropriate Kano Model category on which to focus:

1. Categorize customer requirements according to the Kano Model: Customer requirements are categorized as dissatisfiers, satisfiers, or delighters. They are categorized according to how the team believes customers would categorize them.
2. Determine how well your organization is meeting the requirements in each category: Determining how well your organization is meeting customer requirements in each category requires an honest assessment.
3. State the organization's business objective: A business objective is often a simple statement of what the organization hopes to achieve, such as, increase productivity by ten percent. The business objective will be weighed against the requirements categories to decide which category to focus on first.
4. Choose the category to improve first: The team chooses the category it will improve first by weighing the categories against the business objective. If a company desires a reputation for reliability, the team may select its dissatisfiers—if the firm is not already meeting all these requirements.

When performed in order, these four Kano analysis steps guide the Sigma team to the category of requirements it should improve first. Your team will want to continue prioritizing the categories so it will know which one to improve next.

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