Compiling VOC results – Focus Group

Lee,
Use a tape recorder or better, a video recorder to make sure you don’t miss the context; as for formal tools, the Customer Voice Table (CVT).  The CVT is taught by QFD Institute (http://www.qfdi.org/who_is_qfdi/newsletter_archive/voc_analysis.htm) and is conceptually simple but quite unnerving in practice.
Note that if you can’t go to the “genba” (the actual place of customer usage), you should have mockups/prototypes/samples for the focus group to fiddle with during the discussions.
Good luck,
BC

Lee,
At the risk of giving away copyrighted info, the basic elements of a CVT are as follows: 

Benefits– 
Need/Want: how a customer benefits, not what a product does; does not mention product at all
Solutions–
Characteristic:  a measureable feature
Function:  the product/system “does something”
Design-
Technology:  a technology is specified
Parts/features:  parts or features; things you can see, touch, lose
Reliability:  life span, durability, failure rate, etc.
Price/cost:  any mention of price or cost
 
These categories make up the columns of the table, from left to right starting with needs/wants.  Each customer “verbatim” is placed in its own row, in the appropriate column.  The idea is for the design team to translate the verbatim, working toward the left.  In other words, if a customer specifies that he/she wants a “gripping surface”, this would be placed under the “features” column, and the team’s task is to infer the function, characteristic, and ultimately, the customer’s need/want.
 
That’s all there is to the “template”.  This is easier said than done.  QFD Institute owns this information and they are the best at teaching it.
 
Good luck,
 
BC