The innovative voice of the customer (VOC) data approach that HD Supply Facilities Maintenance uses to drive customer loyalty, continuous improvement, and operational excellence earned the company the top award at the American Society for Quality’s (ASQ) 24th International Team Excellence Awards Process Competition held in May at the 2009 Conference on Quality and Improvement. 

The winning team used a “bottom up” and “top down” approach to implement process improvements, explains Sheri Espinosa, HD Supply's Facilities Maintenance director of special orders and customer information. In addition, the company embraced the concept of driving improvements based on the VOC, while demonstrating that service failures are not the fault of employees, but, rather, are failures in a process that needs adjustment or redesign.

Ayesha Basheer, manager of VOC/fabrication services, adds that "from the bottom-up perspective, the cross-functional VOC project team is passionate about truly understanding customer sentiment and resolving customer issues for operational excellence.”

“The traditional top-down approach was also used, but by using a bottom-up along with a top-down approach, HDS has been able to make significant impacts that reflect in exceptional customer satisfaction scores along with [excellent] process execution from the front-line associates who not only own the process but live the process," says Basheer. "The project turned a systematic program for continuous improvement that is now ingrained in the HD Supply Facilities Maintenance culture.” 

However, changing the mindset of the company’s culture was one of the project’s biggest challenges, according to Espinosa and Basheer. The project was initiated in an environment that was fast paced and in the midst of explosive growth, they explain. Historically, the decisions were made fast and viewed from a single angle. The project had a challenge of steering a cultural change where business improvement decisions are based on customer data and weighing the customer impact. The VOC project team overcame this challenge by remaining open to change and never letting obstacles or resistance stop them from improving the customer experience or enhancing the business. 

Using this approach, the company was able to achieve a 22 percent improvement in the top 10 customer defects, which resulted in $3 million in savings; 10 percent increase in customer loyalty as measured by the company’s Net Promoter Score, which rates whether a current customer would recommend HD Supply to another customer; and the creation of a cross-functional team tasked with executing HD Supply Facilities Maintenance’s strategy while providing foresight into setting operational goals. 

ASQ’s competition featured 27 companies from around the world. This year’s silver medal winner was Philippines-based Littelfuse Phils Inc., which used lean Six Sigma tools to reduce hazardous material, improve product quality, reduce cycle time, and increase profitability. The bronze medal went to New Jersey’s Pershing LLC, which started a project to develop and implement the company’s service level management infrastructure and culture two years ago; and to The Boeing Co.'s team from Long Beach, California, which designed, developed, and fielded a portable wire integrity tester that automatically verifies wiring on the C-17 after a major retrofit, with the goal of seeing a significant time and cost savings.