Recognition of Projects for Service Organizations Based on Customer Expected and Perceived Quality, and Customer Experience

Since its introduction by Motorola in the 1980s, Six Sigma have found widespread application in many manufacturing industries, where its application to service sectors has not been widespread mainly due to the lack of methods and tools appropriate to service process. One of the key aims of six sigma is the recognition of relevant problems aligned with a company strategy and that are relevant to achieve its mission. The general problems related with internal issues like defects and waste to achieve product quality and time delivery. On the other hand, the relevant objectives of service sectors are customer satisfaction and loyalty. Due to the different goals on manufacturing and service sectors, procedures to recognize problems in service industries toned to be developed. This piece of work proposes a toolkit to support the recognition of projects from a different perspective. It proposes the use of different service quality models aimed to service organizations to integrate customer experience tools and ServQual. The proposed Toolkit is developed through the following five stages: 1) collect voice of customer (VOC) and voice of process (VOP); 2) analyze the information; 3) recommend actions; 4) identify and classify projects; 5) prioritize. The recognition phase is based on two dimensions: a) service quality; and c) customer experience. The toolkit developed provides a framework that incorporates customer experience tools to widen the application of six sigma in service industries. The framework and toolkit were tested in the International Lean Six Sigma ITESM-BMGI Certification Program. The results of its application are presented and discussed and future work is proposed.