Consulting

StiehlWorks Offers Consulting in These Areas:

“Voice of the Customer/Pain of the Customer ” Projects

The accurate description and organization of the Voice of the Customer (Pain of the Customer) is a frequent project objective for StiehlWorks. These projects result in an articulated hierarchy of customer needs expressed in their language and organized and prioritized by them, in the way that the customer thinks of them. These projects form the foundation for customer satisfaction surveys, the development of internal metrics, the House of Quality and strategic planning. For a graphic illustration of how this process works, click here.

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Quality Function Deployment (QFD) "House of Quality"

Chris learned these techniques at General Motors. He has almost 20 years of experience in QFD and related techniques. The House of Quality is used to choose the best design characteristics for investment to have the greatest impact on customer satisfaction – whether it is for a product design or process specifications. For a graphic illustration of how this process works, click here.

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Strategic Consulting

Strategic consulting involves using data and knowledge about customers and processes to decide where to invest resources ($, time and staff). Since no one has infinite resources, choices must be made. The key to strategic planning is to plan and make decisions concerning which investments will return the greatest impact per dollar invested.

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Customer Satisfaction

Many organizations collect customer satisfaction data, but how many know what to do with the data once they have it? The keys to measuring customer satisfaction are to ask the right questions and have internal metrics that are predictive of satisfying customers. A score from a customer satisfaction survey should never be a surprise. Questionnaires that are derived from an articulated Voice of the Customer lead to higher response rates and actionable data since the respondents can easily relate to the questions.

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Benchmarking

Benchmarking involves finding comparative data to measure against the performance of your organization and set standards. Chris Stiehl has been an invited speaker at the International Conference on Benchmarking and has taught several companies the methods used in winning the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award.

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Competitive Intelligence

Chris was a competitive intelligence researcher at Cadillac Motor Car Company. The techniques used there helped to benchmark the competition and predict trends for competitors’ performance standards and designs.

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Market Definition

Market definition includes aspects of market intelligence and market segmentation. The basic idea is to define the market in terms that allow strategic decision making.

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Customer Value Management

Customer Value Management, as developed by Dr. Bradley Gale, involves using customer satisfaction and Improvement efforts.

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Focus Groups

Chris has conducted focus groups and research panels for a variety of clients for over 20 years. The key to success with focus groups is to recruit well and allow the respondents to express a variety of opinions concerning the subject matter. There is no substitute for a well-trained and experienced moderator.

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Total Quality Management (TQM)

Chris has extensive experience with TQM methods and techniques from years of practicing TQM in General Motors and Pacific Gas & Electric. He learned from Edwards Deming while at Cadillac. Chris has taught classes in TQM at UC-Berkeley. Brad Gale’s book The PIMS Principle has shown that companies that use TQM outperform those that do not.

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Market Research

Chris has been employed as a researcher for his entire career, and has conducted a variety of studies using various quantitative and qualitative techniques. The key to success is to carefully and completely design the objectives of the research before determining the method(s) to be used.

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Executive Interviews [one-on-one]

This technique is a specialty for StiehlWorks, as this technique is most often used to derive the Voice of the Customer. StiehlWorks has conducted one-on-one studies for respondents as young as teen-agers and as sophisticated as CEOs and presidents of companies. These skills can be taught, and StiehlWorks offers courses in the techniques.

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Malcolm Baldrige Criteria

Chris was on the “Baldrige Team” at Cadillac in 1989 and 1990 (the year Cadillac won for major manufacturing). He was a key witness in the defense of the Cadillac application for the award. Chris has conducted classes at UC-Berkeley on the Baldrige Award and the benefits of using the criteria for self-evaluation.

"Voice of the Employee" and Related Employee Retention Strategies

The Voice of the Customer techniques have been used to develop a Voice of the Employee in some organizations. This allows the management of an organization to develop metrics for employees’ satisfaction and performance. These measures then can be used to predict internal metrics related to customer satisfaction. Many employee surveys (the so-called “standardized” ones) ask what management wants to know. The StiehlWorks techniques discover what employees want to say, and what they need to perform better.

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Defining Customer-focused Internal Metrics

Every organization tracks internal metrics (i.e., the “balanced scorecard” or “dashboard”), but how many are truly customer-focused? How many internal metrics are directly related to predicting customer satisfaction and how many are measures of outcomes? Most companies have metrics that are outcome-oriented that are like looking in the rearview mirror. StiehlWorks can help you devise internal metrics that are predictive of customer outcomes. An example would be: how do you measure the freshness of popcorn at a movie theater? Many companies would ask customers (after the fact, external) rather than merely measure how many minutes the popcorn has been in the bin (predictive, internal).

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Non-Profit Management / Fundraising / Strategic Planning

Lorraine’s 20-year history in non-profit organizations, along with her previous political fundraising background, has equipped StiehlWorks with the ability to provide consulting services in the following areas: major gift fundraising, special event fundraising, non-profit management, board development, volunteer recruitment, human resource management and strategic planning. Lorraine specializes in strategic planning retreat facilitation and she has assisted numerous organizations in developing effective strategic plans. Combined with the other techniques noted above, StiehlWorks is in a unique position to guide both corporate and non-profit organizations in their strategic planning efforts.

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