The Kano Model: Customer Sat­is­fac­tion Guar­an­teed

In every company, customer sat­is­fac­tion is a high priority. However, there is rarely clear guidance on how to please customers. Don’t worry though, there are tools that help companies set up and implement a higher customer sat­is­fac­tion system. For example, the Kano analysis tool. It can be used for small or large companies and applied in all industry op­er­a­tions. This system from Japan has par­tic­u­lar­ly proven itself in web de­vel­op­ment.

Developed in 1978 and named after its inventor Noriaki Kano, the Kano model helps companies increase customer sat­is­fac­tion. In order to achieve this, the Japanese scientist analyzed customer requests and found that customers have different types of re­quire­ments for a product or service. He found 5 different types of customer re­quire­ments in his research. What they all have in common is that the customer always compares a target state with an actual state. If the idea moves too far away from the actual situation, dis­sat­is­fac­tion arises.

Dividing into different features also explains one of the fun­da­men­tal ideas of the Kano model: Absence of dis­sat­is­fac­tion does not au­to­mat­i­cal­ly lead to customer sat­is­fac­tion. Whether a cor­re­la­tion occurs depends on what kind of feature is being discussed. Which means: just because a par­tic­u­lar feature of a product is par­tic­u­lar­ly well-defined, does it also lead to a par­tic­u­lar­ly high level of customer sat­is­fac­tion?

When you un­der­stand this dis­tinc­tion and can judge your product in terms of the five feature types, the Kano model directly assists in op­ti­miz­ing customer sat­is­fac­tion. This is because companies can use this method to quickly identify the right ad­just­ments to make. At the same time, the division into different cat­e­gories helps to gain com­pet­i­tive ad­van­tages: if you establish new functions in the right feature category, you can often out­per­form the com­pe­ti­tion.

The Kano model dis­tin­guish­es five different re­quire­ment types. The ful­fill­ment of customer re­quire­ments provides varying degrees of increase in customer sat­is­fac­tion from area to area. To il­lus­trate how the model works, we will use the example of de­vel­op­ing an online store.

Threshold features are prac­ti­cal­ly self-ex­plana­to­ry functions. Every customer choosing a product assumes that these kinds of functions are there. This means the mere existence of the features is barely no­tice­able to the customer, but their absence will lead to strong dis­sat­is­fac­tion. For companies, this means that sat­is­fy­ing these re­quire­ments does not provide greater customer sat­is­fac­tion. However, if the re­quire­ments are not met, customers are very dis­sat­is­fied.

An example of this: The fact that the user can access the online store in their browser does not lead to par­tic­u­lar sat­is­fac­tion. They take this for granted. However, if the site does not load because, for example, the server has gone down, they im­me­di­ate­ly notice this feature and it causes immediate dis­sat­is­fac­tion.

The customer con­scious­ly notices functions clas­si­fied as per­for­mance features. They have a certain idea of what features or char­ac­ter­is­tics a product or service should offer. The absence of functions also leads to dis­sat­is­fac­tion in this area. In contrast to threshold feature re­quire­ments, you can also earn plus points in this category. This is because, if you meet the re­quire­ments un­ex­pect­ed­ly well, customer sat­is­fac­tion increases.

To go back to our example, each online store offers its own payment system. If you offer the user several options to pay for their purchase, they will be pleased. But if, for example, you only offer one option, it’s not nec­es­sar­i­ly bad. However, if this option fails then the customer will leave having had a dis­sat­is­fy­ing ex­pe­ri­ence.

The ex­cite­ment category includes features that customers do not expect. They don’t even know that these features are a pos­si­bil­i­ty, and their absence doesn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly lead to dis­sat­is­fac­tion. However, if you surprise customers with a special, in­no­v­a­tive feature, sat­is­fac­tion increases. If you introduce un­ex­pect­ed product features, you can also gain a com­pet­i­tive advantage. The dif­fi­cul­ty, however, is dis­cov­er­ing these functions. Because, just like for the customers, im­pres­sive features aren’t self-evident for product de­vel­op­ers—they require special effort in the product or service design.

Adding automated delivery via drone to our sample online store could be seen as an exciting feature. The customers do not expect this kind of service and this secures an advantage over the com­pe­ti­tion.

Not every feature of a product or service is relevant to customer sat­is­fac­tion. Often, a feature is not ir­rel­e­vant for the customer per se, but the presence or absence of the feature has no or very little impact on sat­is­fac­tion or dis­sat­is­fac­tion.

For example, you could address reg­is­tered customers per­son­al­ly in your online store. This feature certainly has benefits, but it doesn’t really increase customer sat­is­fac­tion. Users do not expect this feature, so they are not dis­sat­is­fied if it does not exist, but don’t usually ac­knowl­edge the personal salu­ta­tion with ex­cite­ment.

Con­verse­ly to the threshold features that are first noticed when they are missing, the reverse features only have an effect when they occur—and often, a negative one at that. So, their absence is con­sid­ered the normal status. In most cases, these are faults or con­di­tions that the man­u­fac­tur­er did not intend. But even functions that help the company, but also burden the customer, are con­sid­ered to be reverse features.

If we think of our online store in the example, then a possible reverse feature would be, for example, a reg­is­tra­tion option for spam emails when buying an item. The customer doesn’t expect to receive annoying emails as a result of the reg­is­tra­tion process, and as soon as the first of these emails arrives, they will def­i­nite­ly be dis­sat­is­fied.

Some functions can’t always be clearly assigned to just one feature category, or their status may change over time. Through fa­mil­iar­iza­tion, for example, features that were initially con­sid­ered to be ex­cite­ment features even­tu­al­ly become per­for­mance features and, after a few years, are con­sid­ered sat­is­fiers. What impressed customers when in­tro­duced will in­creas­ing­ly be perceived as standard through­out the process (es­pe­cial­ly when other market par­tic­i­pants are also picking up on the in­no­va­tion), and develops to become the norm.