In an attempt to better understand and accommodate customers’ needs, organizations are involving customers in product design, prototyping, production, supply chain planning, and more. Customers are increasingly engaged in quality processes, participating at points where quality is critical to overall success and not just at the point of product delivery.

In some organizations, quality and the customer have become so closely aligned in processes such as sharing quality-specific data, defining requirements, and capturing actual perceptions of performance that ASQ coined the term “Qustomer” to describe this relationship, and used the term in the “Discoveries 2013” report, part of ASQ’s Global State of Quality Research.

The first-ever global research of its kind, the Global State of Quality Research is provided in three reports comprising baseline data about the current state of practices that quality professionals and organizations use. Also available is a series of spotlight reports, including one on the Qustomer, which analyze the themes that emerged from the research.

 …