Tools For Determining Customer Requirements

Tool	Advantages	Disadvantages
Surveys	Relatively inexpensive to administer; require minimal effort from team	Unless carefully constructed, may not elicit important information
Focus groups	Provide opportunity to digress from agenda and discover underlying problem; group setting may encourage participation and “building on” another’s response	Require more time to conduct than surveys; group setting may intimidate some participants
Individual interviews	Excellent way to discuss sensitive topics and to obtain specialized information that might be boring to others in a group setting; ideal for people who are uncomfortable in groups	Most time-intensive method
Site visits	Excellent way to see the effect of problems and to meet customers who would otherwise be inaccessible	Can be expensive; customers may be unwilling to host site visits
Customer complaints	Lowest cost	Provides only one perspective; does not address problems that other customers have not expressed; unbalanced, since it does not include positive comments