ASQ CQE Certified Quality Engineer – Section I – Management and Leadership (18 Questions) Part 6

48. 1F Communication Skills

Section we will talk about communication skills. As a team leader or facilitator, it is very important for you to make sure that an open communication happens between team members and between you and team members. And as a team leader or as a team facilitator, you need to encourage communication. Because if there is the right mixture of communication, right type of communication happening in the team, there is a good chance that your team will meet the objective.

In this slide I’ve shown the communication model, how communication happens, how things get communicated from Sender to receiver. Let’s say Sender has a message which sender wants to convey to the receiver. So the first thing sender will do is sender will encode that message, encode that message in terms of written message, in terms of verbal message, in terms of facial expressions.

So in some way center will encode that message, then that message will travel through a channel. And then there are different channels for written communication, for verbal communication or for nonverbal communication. Once this communication reaches the receiver, the first thing receiver will do is receiver will decode that message. Decode that message to understand what is the message and with that receiver received the message. So this is the forward path how communication moves from Sender to receiver. But then equally important is the feedback which sender gets back from the receiver. Whether the receiver has got the right information or not.

So there is a feedback loop and once you are communicating, make sure that you have that feedback loop in place. So when you convey a message, make sure that that message is rightly conveyed. What does receiver understood by your message? So take that feedback which is important. You also need to understand that whenever there is a communication, there is a noise and this noise is basically contributing to the distortion of the message.

So once you convey the message, message might get distorted because of this noise. This noise could be sort of a physical noise which you hear. Or this noise could be in terms of misunderstanding, in terms of the biases people have. So based on that message might get distorted. So it’s important that you get the feedback. So this is the communication model and with this you need to understand that that choose the right channel, make sure that the person understands that whatever message you have conveyed through the feedback and be aware of noise which could distort your message.

So with this communication model, let’s move and look at the communication methods. So here I have three common methods. So the first one is the verbal communication, second one is nonverbal where things get conveyed by facial expression, by nonverbal thing. And then there is a written communication. Most of the time you use written channel for formal communication. So any communication could be broadly categorized into one of these three approaches or three methods.

49. 1G Customer Relations

In the section one which was management and leadership. We are left with three topics. One related to customer, the next one is related to supplier and the last one is related to barriers to quality improvement. Let’s start with this topic which is customer relations. So first let’s look at the topics which we are going to cover in this. So in customer relations we will be looking at two topics here.

One is the quality function Deployment and second is Customer Satisfaction survey. Quality function deployment is also known as the house of quality. This is a tool to gather what customer wants, the customer requirements and customer Satisfaction survey. We’ll tell us whether we met our objective of customer satisfaction or not. So let’s look at these two tools starting with the Quality function deployment on the next video.

50. 1G Quality Function Deployment

Was the tool which was developed by Yogi Akao in 1970s. This is the tool to acquire the voice of customer and then transforming that into the product requirements. So here I have the structure of a QFD, the quality function deployment. This sample was taken from Sigma Excel Sigma axle as a template and you can open that template in Microsoft axle and you can fill the requirements of QFD in that sheet or in that template. So let’s look at this template here. What does this template has broadly? So the first thing in this template is what part which is here what does customer want? And the next thing then you do is how you are going to achieve that. That is something which are put here. So that’s step number two, how you will be doing that. Then coming to the third box here, which tells the relationship between what and how. And in this relationship you say whether there is no relationship or there is a weak, moderate or strong relationship.

That’s what you put here. Weak relationship is given number one, the moderate relationship is given number three, and the strong relationship is given number nine. So if there’s a strong relationship, let’s say the customer wants a quick service, a quick registration and for that registration you have a software where you already have customer information. So there is a strong relationship between this what customer wants and how that is achieved. So in this specific case you might want to give a rating of nine that there’s a strong relationship between this specific what and this specific how that you put in this relationship. So you might want to put a nine here against a specific what and a specific how. So that’s one thing. Then you look at competitors, how your competitors are doing, then you look at the targets here. What are the targets you want to achieve?

That your target is five minutes for registration and then you want to put a best benchmark, what other competitors are doing, and then you might want to put an implementation here that whether it’s difficult and what is the priority to implement that. So that’s put here on top you have a relationship between two hows. So this relationship between two house are put here at the top. So this specific and this specific solution so two specific solutions the relationship between that is put at the crossing of that so that’s here importance should be put here that what is the importance of specific customer requirement that you put very early here as a maybe step number two or step number three?

That what is the importance of that particular customer requirement? So you make all this matrix and this helps you in implementing the solutions to meet the customer requirements and this is how you translate the requirements of your customer into how you are achieving that. The application of QFD is both in manufacturing and service. So you can have this in service industry, manufacturing, business, process development, government or any other application. This has a quite wide application. On the next slide, let’s look at an example which was created using hand drawing.

So, QFD was made using roughly hand drawing how a QFD was created. So that will give you a more idea about how QFD is created. So let’s move on to that. So, here we have another simple QFD. And this QFD was created for preparation of this course. For example, if I have to prepare this course, what do my students look for? And that was the what component of QFD. So that I have put on the left that students need comprehensive course, they need practice quizzes, they need the course to be interesting and they need the course to be practical. And then the next step was to put the priority to each of these based on the survey, which I would have done.

So, comprehensiveness was given a priority of seven, interesting was given a priority of nine, et cetera. And then on the top I have how I will achieve that. So, achievement is done by smaller courses, smaller videos, giving more examples, complying to the body of knowledge and having quizzes. So these four steps I thought would help in meeting my customer requirements. And then I made the relationship between that. So for example, if you look at the comprehensiveness and the body of knowledge as how there is a strong relationship, students want the course to be comprehensive. If this course is clause by clause matching with the body of knowledge of a good ASQ exam, then that will make the course very comprehensive. So there is a strong relationship between that.

And then what you do is you multiply that number. So that number for strong relationship was nine. So nine multiplied by seven, which was priority, gives me a 63 score on the right. So that tells me which all things I need to attend to first. So, if I look at score 171, then it tells me that having course interesting is the most important thing to my students. And once again, let me tell you that these numbers and this QFD is a hypothetical. So there is no practical data collected for that. This is just to demonstrate how you create QFD. So, once I know that my student wants this course to be interesting, then I should be working towards that. And then on extreme right, if you see, then I have put there the competitors, how my competitors for online courses on Six Sigma are doing.

So I would have looked at one to five competitors and see how they are performing on each of these parameters, on comprehensiveness, on having quizzes, on making the course interesting and practical. And then I can mark how my course is performing compared to competitors. Now, going to the bottom, it calculates the score of how. So if you look at the first column, which is a strong relationship between interesting and small videos, which is the rating of nine.

So the nine multiplied by the priority, which is also nine, gives me 81. And that way I calculate all the scores for how and I see that 153, which is for examples is the highest score. So that means having more examples will help in achieving more customer satisfaction. And then I can put targets for these. For example, for smaller videos I can put a limit of two to ten minutes, and for quizzes I can put an example of 100 question, et cetera. So that’s how if you see a quality function deployment matrix or QFD was prepared, this is a simple, plain example to explain the concept of QFD.

51. 1G Customer Satisfaction

In the topic of customer relations after talking about the house of quality or the quality function deployment, the next topic is customer satisfaction. How do we assess how much satisfied our customer is? So there are a number of ways, let’s look at those. The first one here in the list is survey. You can do a survey of customers perception of your quality. In surveys you list listen to the customer and this survey could be done by mail, by phone or by web survey and you get a feedback from the customer. So this is one way of assessing customer satisfaction. Second is the focus group. In focus group we have a group of people put together and we discuss about our product or service to find out how satisfied they are. We will be going into details of surveys and focus groups in next few slides and then other thing could be having an interview or meeting with the customer to find out how much satisfied they are.

Interviews and meetings are generally done when you have a bigger project, bigger customer and this is a one to one interaction with the customer to find out how customer is satisfied with your product or service. And then the fourth option could be to observe, to observe how your customer is using your product and based on that you can assess whether your customer is satisfied with your service or product or not. So these are four broad types of approaches to find out the level of customer satisfaction. In next few slides we will be looking at two of these which are survey and focus group. So let’s start with survey on the next slide.

So when you are doing survey the first thing which you need to be very clear is that what is the goal of your survey? What do you want to achieve with that? What do you want to find out with that? You need to be very clear about that and in survey make sure that your questions are clear because putting a vague question, putting a question which might have a double meaning, which might really confuse customer will not help you. So the questions should be very clear and precise, unambiguous people should not be able to misinterpret that. Make it very simple, very clear that’s something. Second thing is many times you put a scale like how much satisfied you are on a scale of one to 10. For example in this course also you will be asked to assess this course on a rating from one star to five star.

So that’s the scale which tells you that what is the level of satisfaction? Another important thing in survey is that if you maintain consistency time after time, month after month, year after year, then that can really give you a good historical perspective. Let’s say every month you have a survey and every month you have new set of questions. In that case you really cannot judge whether your performance is getting better, whether your performance is deteriorating. So if you have a standard set of questions, that way you can compare the satisfaction level year after year, month after month. So that also is something which you need to keep in your mind. That make sure that if there is a consistency that will help you to find out the trend. And then it’s good to have some open ended questions. Rather than answering as the level on one to 10 or answering as yes or no, keep some questions which are open ended where your customer can put whatever thinking they have.

Many times you will see a box which tells customers that what else you want to tell us, what’s your feedback? So this is an open ended question where client will give you an open ended statement, his or her opinion about the product or surveys. Before you send this survey out, review this survey. And many times it’s a good idea to send this survey to a small group of people. First look at the feedback, so that if there’s any problem with the survey, if there’s any misunderstanding, you sort that out before you send to a bigger audience. And then once you have done survey, it’s very, very important to analyze that. So make sure that you analyze the results of that survey.

So this was about surveys. Another thing here is focused groups. This is something which is similar to survey, but here we don’t hand out a paper where people are asked to put the number or comments. Here in focus group we have a small group of people who are asked about the perception, opinion, belief or attitude. Here, instead of handing out a piece of paper or a web page where they will respond, here we ask a small group of people to assemble together and we ask them about their perception, opinion and belief about this product or service. So this is an open communication with that small group which is called as the focus group. So generally we have six to ten people in that and there is an open discussion. But then you need a skill moderator, so that this person who is the moderator makes sure that the discussion is on track and people are giving feedback on the product and service and this discussion doesn’t go off track. So this is focus group.

So in focus group, as we said, we have six to ten people who are being surveyed or whose opinion is being sought. And we have a moderator who moderates this discussion. In this process, the first thing which moderator needs to do is have some engaging questions, so that all 610 people who are in the group really get engaged. So keep some simple questions so that people get engaged in the discussion. So that discussion starts, people open up. And then what this moderator will do is moderator will ask some exploration questions. So this fellow will try to explore the opinion of that. Go a little bit deeper. Rather than just saying that they are satisfied or not satisfied with the product. Go a little bit deeper. Check what’s the problem, what’s their belief, how this product helps them, how this product doesn’t help them.

Ask all these sort of exploration questions so that this person, the moderator, can get maximum output from these people who are a part of focus group. So once this is done, and then at the end, moderator will ask someone exit questions that if there is anything else someone wants to add, listen to that and add that also as a feedback. So this is an approach which you can use when you are moderating a focus group.

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