A few years ago, I met Noriaki Kano at a hotel restaurant in St. Paul to talk about his famous satisfaction model that helped earn him a Deming Prize and ASQ Medals of Distinction. A retired professor, Kano still spoke about the evolution of his model with intensity and curiosity.

The point of the Kano Satisfaction Model is that organizations need a profound understanding of their customers’ requirements to increase satisfaction and secure loyalty. Not all customer requirements are equal. The Baldrige Criteria ask: “How do you use customer, market, and product offering information to identify and anticipate key customer requirements and changing expectations and their relative importance to customers’ purchasing or relationship decisions?”According to Kano, “relative importance” can be characterized as basic, performance, and excitement.

Basic services or features do little to improve satisfaction unless they fail, in which case they can cause serious dissatisfaction. We expect the checkout lane in a store to move relatively quickly and without any problems. When it does, we don’t feel more satisfied with the store because that is what we expected. When it doesn’t, we feel frustrated and dissatisfied.

Performance services or features are those that produce customer satisfaction. If the store you are visiting is Wal-Mart and you get excited about paying the lowest prices, the signage showing great deals is a differentiable service. If you are shopping at Target, the wide and welcoming aisles and the quality of the merchandise may be differentiable services. Wal-Mart, Target, and other stores must be clear about the drivers of customer satisfaction to attract and retain customers.

Excitement services or features are the unexpected “wows” that customers experience. It may be an unexpected low price, a particularly helpful clerk, or product selection beyond your expectations. These are the moments that cement relationships with your customers and prompt them to tell others about their experience.

Kano’s model is hierarchical: You must provide the basic services before you can offer differentiable services, and you must do both before you can “wow” your customers.

And before you can do any of these, you must be absolutely certain that you understand who your customers are and what each customer group requires.

To learn more about customer satisfaction and engagement, click on these articles:

• Creating a Unique Customer Experience
• Stakeholder Mapping
• Be Careful How You Measure Customer Satisfaction
• Walk in Your Customer’s Body Armor
• Bottom-Line Value of Customer Engagement
• 10 Critical Questions: Your Customers

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