Management must develop an attitude that puts the customer in every decision made. The customer is the reason we are in business. Without customers there would be no job to perform, no requirements to be met, and no reason anyone would wish to purchase your company's stock.
As explained in the Introduction, there are two kinds of customers: internal and external. External customers provide income for the organization through purchasing goods or services. Internal customers (employees) satisfy the requirements of the external customers and the requirements of others in their own organization. Both are important and need to be understood for an organization to succeed and prosper.
External Customers
The expression "The customer is always right" is not always true; however, one right of the customer is always true: "The customer has the right to purchase from whomever he wants." With this in mind, we should make every attempt to make sure the customer wants to buy from us.
To assess the needs of your customers, utilize input from all customer contact personnel. In an organization that follows TQM principles, input can come from the sales representative, your marketing group, the quality department, manufacturing, customer service, and engineering. The method in which the input is provided can be reactive or proactive. Both sources should be looked upon as opportunities for satisfying your customers' needs.
Reactive input is in the form of customer complaints or from interpreting customer purchase orders or sales inquiries.
When customer complaints are received, either as written complaints or in the form of returned goods, most organizations react as fire fighters and focus on the hot spot.
We sometimes ignore the system that created the problem in the first place. When a purchase order or sales inquiry is received, most organizations interpret their customer's requirements through the mirror of their own paradigms.
Proactive input is solicited through visits to the customer's place of business, visits to your facility by your customer, customer satisfaction surveys, and by cross-functional teams consisting of employees from customer and supplier facilities.
All these activities should be part of management's strategic business plan.
Internal Customers
In a TQM environment, the attention paid to employees is as important as, if not more important than, attention paid to the customer. The employee is the internal customer of the organization, the individual who can make things happen.
His or her understanding of the organization's goals and commitment to the customer must be complete. This can be assured by following a three-step process that includes (1) an employee survey, (2) an employee training program, and (3) regular communication sessions to continually reinforce the organization's goals.
Employee Survey
The employee survey should be designed to provide an assessment of how the employee feels about the company and how he perceives his role to the customer. An example of a survey I used successfully. The TQM steering committee should review and analyze employee survey results and determine the training program required to bring employees up to speed on company goals. Training can be conducted by inside experts or by using outside resources. There are advantages and disadvantages to both approaches.
The advantages to using inside experts are cash flow containment and assuring that the training is tailored to existing company paradigms. The disadvantages of using in-house experts are having to overcome existing negative perceptions of the expert, if there are any, and removing the expert from his duties to provide preparation and training.
The advantages of using outside sources for training are many. Among them is the natural perception that an outside consultant knows more about a subject than inside people.
This advantage can create a more receptive learning environment for the employee. Another advantage is that no time is taken from anyone's schedule for preparation of lesson plans. Two major disadvantages are expense and the fact that the outside resource is not familiar with your company culture.
Both options of training must be evaluated by the TQM steering committee, and selection of training resources should be made on the best fit analysis. The key is to assure that whatever training source is utilized that the source emulates the goals of the organization.
Activities concerning customers need to be communicated to everyone in the organization in a timely manner. Most information can be distributed on a monthly basis, but special news should be disseminated as required. An ideal method of sharing news is through a company newsletter that contains information on employees, customers, and continuous improvement activities.
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