Voice of the Customer is a Lean Six Sigma technique to determine __________________ attributes of a product or service.

The Voice of the Customer (VOC) is a foundational process in Lean Six Sigma used to capture the stated and unstated needs or requirements of the customer. The primary objective of gathering VOC data is to translate these often qualitative customer statements into a set of specific, measurable, and actionable performance requirements. These key attributes, which must be controlled to ensure customer satisfaction, are formally known as Critical-to-Quality (CTQ) characteristics. The entire VOC to CTQ process ensures that the improvement efforts are directly linked to what truly matters to the customer.

A. At least 6: The number of critical attributes is determined by customer requirements for a specific product or service, not by an arbitrary minimum number like six.
B. The profitable: While meeting CTQs can lead to increased profitability, the direct purpose of the VOC process is to identify attributes critical to quality and customer satisfaction, not to perform a financial analysis.
D. The majority of the: VOC focuses on identifying the critical few attributes that have the greatest impact on customer satisfaction, rather than simply identifying the numerical majority of all possible attributes.

1. Cohen, L. (1995). Quality Function Deployment: How to Make QFD Work for You. Addison-Wesley. In Chapter 3, "The Voice of the Customer," the text explains that customer needs (the VOC) are the inputs that are translated into design requirements, which are synonymous with Critical-to-Quality (CTQ) characteristics.

2. MIT OpenCourseWare. (2004). 16.852J / ESD.352J Integrating the Lean Enterprise, Fall 2004. Lecture 4: Customer Focus and QFD. Slide 11, "The 'House of Quality'," explicitly shows the "Voice of the Customer" as the input that is translated into "Engineering Characteristics" or CTQs. [Link: https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/16-852j-integrating-the-lean-enterprise-fall-2004/resources/lecture4/]

3. Griffin, A., & Hauser, J. R. (1993). The Voice of the Customer. Marketing Science, 12(1), 1–27. This seminal paper details the process of collecting customer needs and translating them into actionable design specifications, which is the essence of defining CTQs. (DOI: https://doi.org/10.1287/mksc.12.1.1)