Experiences in the application of customer-based metrics in improving software service quality

A discussion is presented of experiences with the use of customer-based measures of software service quality and the resulting quality measurement and improvement system required to support these measures. The customer-based metrics become the heart of a system which employs various quality improvement techniques-quality function deployment, root cause analysis, and defect prevention. The software service examined is the delivery and application of software loads to digital central telephone office customers. The general methodology discussed is applicable to other service areas