3 Service QFD – the Starting Point for Internet Banking Services Quality Function Deployment (QFD) is one of the processes incorporated into the Total Quality Management (TQM) concept. QFD is not only a methodological and statistical tool designed for one use but an overall concept that provides a means of translating customer requirements for each stage of product development and production [1]. It is a coherent technique that analyses, prioritises, translates spoken and unspoken customer requirements and involves everyone in an organization. QFD is a comprehensive technique of knowledge processing that integrates all organizational know-how and even reveals internal company knowledge hidden and badly communicated through the organizational structure. QFD fundamentally supports decision making throughout an organizational structure. Once implemented QFD improves team cooperation and promotes teamwork particularly between research, development, and marketing/sales teams. By exploring the culture where teams must cooperate, by understanding the tasks and publishing responsibilities, QFD improves levels of trust and a pure and honest working environment in an organization. The name Quality Function Deployment expresses its true purpose, which is satisfying customers (Quality) by translating their needs into a design and ensuring that all organizational units (Function) work together to systematically break down their activities into finer and finer detail that can be quantified and controlled (Deployment) [8]. QFD dates from 1966 (Yoki Akao) and its penetration into service industries started in the early 1980s in Japanese companies. Quality Function Deployment (QFD) is a systematic matrix-based visual approach for designing quality products and services. The best-known matrix is the first in the QFD hierarchy, referred to as the House of Quality (HoQ). During the whole process, different size matrices are being constructed (planning matrix/HoQ, concept selection matrix, subsystem/assembly deployment matrix, process planning matrix). Organizational goals & Customer segments Voice of Customer analysis(Planning, definition, prioritisation)Demanded qualities & Quality attributesQuality attributes & FunctionsFunctions & New conceptFigure 1: The QFD Deployments applied to Internet Banking Services 7 7 From the system implementation point of view the following deployments (Figure 1) have be addressed and precisely analysed particularly in a service organization: Organizational Deployment: To map the QFD steps to the different organizational functions; who is responsible for what activities and when during the service planning and development process; highly recommended that organizational deployment be done before QFD is applied to a specific service; Customer Deployment: The deployment of organizational goals into core competencies, into customer attributes, into target customer segments. This helps “tailor” the services to the needs of those customers who can best help achieve organization goals. Voice of Customer Deployment (VOC): VOC tables are used to record raw customer data, use characteristics for defining quality requirements, and so separate the different types of service attributes. In order to satisfy customers, it is important to understand how meeting their requirements affects satisfaction and other specific aspects such as customer involvement, customer preference, customer responsiveness, methodological items of processing and prioritising client requirements. Quality Deployment: Customer-demanded quality and priorities into measurable service quality attributes. Function Deployment: Used to identify functional areas of the organization, which are critical for performing tasks that must achieve the quality attribute targets. New Concept Deployment: Used in conjunction with Quality Improvement Stories (a structured problem- solving approach), to select a new process that will best satisfy customers’ needs. Task Deployment: Breaks down critical jobs into tasks and steps. Reliability Deployment: Identifies and prevents failures of critical customer requirements. 4 Case study The QFD application was carried out in cooperation with the Electronic Banking and Development department of a Slovak bank in the period November 2002 - May 2003. The bank has been operating in the Slovak financial market since 1993 and is well recognized as a corporate and retail bank possessing an advanced technology platform, though not promoting the quality of online services to a sufficient level. The preparation process included a series of bank visits where the bank’s internal documents were provided. The deployment of the ‘Voice of the Customer’ and Quality Deployment (Marked in the Figure 1) were carried out in the following sub-steps. ‘Voice of the Customer’ Deployment The first step of our case study was to identify the quality criteria the bank’s customers were expecting from the Internet banking services. The data was collected in the form of an unstructured customer survey, which included suggestions and ideas about the Internet banking services. They were analysed in several steps: § Iterative completion of a list of all the suggestions § Suggestions’ clustering according to their affinities (23 clusters, frequencies) § Definition of demanded quality criteria § Clusters allocated among the demanded qualities - each cluster could have shared more than one of the formulated service criteria allowing allocating frequencies for each of the service criteria 8 8§ Prioritisation of service quality criteria Refining the voice of the customer is often a demanding task and requires a systematic way ofcommon part of day-to-day management may be a difficult re-engineering task. QFD can be perceived as constraining and often requires additional resources especially at the starting level. By applying QFD we demonstrated the potential this technique has in defining customer expectations and the translation of these expectations into the design specifications, thus ensuring the customer’s satisfaction.