Customer Focus and orientations

There are two types of customers i.e. internal and external. Internal customers are within the company-the colleagues working together for delivering a service or product for the external customer. We will, however, remain restricted to the external customers here.

An external customer may be an individual or an enterprise that hires or purchases the product(s) or service(s) from another person or business in exchange of money.

One of the most important factors for the success of an enterprise is its customers. Without them, a business cannot exist. But to capture customers, a business must try to find out what people want, how much and how often they will buy and how their post-purchase satisfaction will be ensured.

Relation of a process vs its customer

The process is defined as a set of interconnected activities that result in a product or a service to be offered to a customer. Thus, their relation is of critical importance. The result of one activity (the process) directly affects the other entity (the customer).

For example, all the customer complaints are analogous to process variation. If variation that is non-conformance to the quality standards occurs, it will ultimately affect the quality of the end product or service. Therefore it important to keep a strong check on this aspect.

Customer satisfaction

This concept of customer satisfaction is new to many companies, it’s important to be clear on exactly what’s meant by the term.

 Customer satisfaction is the state of mind that customers have about a company when their expectations have been met or exceeded over the lifetime of the product or service. The achievement of customer satisfaction leads to company loyalty and product repurchase. There are some important implications of this definition:

1.  Because customer satisfaction is a subjective, no quantitative state, measurement won’t be exact and will require sampling and statistical analysis.

2. Customer satisfaction measurement must be undertaken with an understanding of the gap between customer expectations and attribute performance perceptions.

3.  There should be some connection between customer satisfaction measurement and bottom-line results.

 “Satisfaction” itself can refer to a number of different facts of the relationship with a customer. For example, it can refer to any or all of the following:

a)  Satisfaction with the quality of a particular product or service

b)  Satisfaction with an ongoing business relationship

c)  Satisfaction with the price-performance ratio of a product or service

d)  Satisfaction because a product/service met or exceeded the customer’s expectations

Quality with respect to customer satisfaction process

Many companies approach customer satisfaction in a narrow way by confining quality considerations to the product alone. Whereas, service connected with the product are frequently over looked, such as packaging, timely and accurate shipping and ability to meet deadline matters.

Key Indicators used to measure customer satisfaction

There are two basic steps in measurement system:

1. Develop key indicators that drive customer satisfaction.

2. Collect data regarding perception of quality received by customers

                Key Indicators for Physical Products

1. Reliability

2. Aesthetics

3. Adaptability

4. Usability

5. Functionality

6. Appropriateness

               Key Indicators for Services

1. Friendliness/courteousness of employees

2. Safety/risk of service

3. Billing/invoicing procedure

4. Responsiveness to requests

5. Appearance of physical facilities

6. Approachability of the service provider

7. Willingness to listen to customer

8. Honesty and an ability to communicate in clear language

Objectives of a customer satisfaction

In addition to a clear statement defining customer satisfaction, any successful surveying program must have a clear set of objectives that, once met, will lead to improved performance. The most basic objectives that should be met by any customer satisfaction include the following:

1. Understanding the expectations and requirements of all your customers

2. Determining how well your company and its competitors are satisfying these expectations and requirements

3. Developing service and/or product standards based on your findings

4. Examining trends over time in order to take action on a timely basis

5. Establishing priorities and standards to judge how well you’ve met these goals

6. The customers’ own experiences—each time they experience a product or service, deciding whether that experience is great, neutral or terrible. These are known as “moments of truth.”

7. The experiences of other customers—each time they hear something about a company, whether it’s great, neutral or terrible. This is known as “word-of-mouth.”