Evaluating customer support during new product development - An exploratory study

Anyone who has struggled with a balky computer understands the importance of product support. Useful support for a high-tech product may take various forms, including installation documentation, field service, user training and product up-grades. All these forms of support share a common goal: achieving customer satisfaction with the product To increase the likelihood of customer satisfaction with a high-tech product a firm must carefully consider the product's support requirements during the design stage of the new-product development (NPD) effort. As Keith Goffin points out, however relatively little research has been published about the manner in which product design influences product support. He suggests that firms may benefit from considering product support requirements during the design stage, in much the same way as design for manufacturability (DFM) techniques enable firms to increase ease of manufacture. In a survey of high-tech firms, he explores the ways in which companies evaluate product support requirements during the design stage. The study also examines whether firms use quantitative goals to focus the design team's attention on a product's support needs. To provide deeper understanding of the interrelationship between support requirements and product design, he also presents a case study involving Hewlett-Packard's development of a complex medical device. With responses from 66 companies, the survey offers the first empirical data on how companies plan for product support. Whereas DFM techniques involve consideration of manufacturability during the early stages of design, more than two-thirds of the companies in the study begin planning for support during the second half of the product development process. Only slightly more than one-half of the respondents report the use of a formal product support plan, although use of this type of document is more prevalent among the computer firms in the study. The companies in this study do not consider all aspects of support during precinct planning. The respondents also do nor set quantitative goals for all aspects of support during the design stage. They typically set quantitative goals for service-related aspects of support-for example product reliability targets such as annual failure rate-rather than for such support areas as user training. The survey responses identify a range of measures which could be used for performing a more comprehensive evaluation of support requirements during the design stage.