“We
can believe that we know where the
world should go. But unless we're
in touch with our customers, our model
of the world can diverge from reality.
There's no substitute for innovation,
of course, but innovation is no substitute
for being in touch either.”
Steve
Ballmer
Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Microsoft
Corporation
Quality is defined as conforming to customer’s
requirements – offering a product or
service that exactly matches or surpasses
his expectations.
Customer is the king. To understand what the
customers want one has to interact and listen
to them. That is the first step, and then,
in order to differentiate one’s product
from other available options, one needs to
continue listening to customers to identify
new areas in which value can be added ---
listening is absolutely essential for responding
to customer’s needs and expectations.
Whom should you listen to? Virtually everyone,
who are part of the business process. This
includes your colleagues in the company who
help you or take your help in making a product,
or the customers who come to the sales outlet
and buy the product. We classify the first
category as “Internal Customers”;
while the latter can be classified as “External
Customers”.
•
INTERNAL CUSTOMERS
Excellent customer service starts internally
and is reflected externally. Your first
customers are your internal ones. Who
are they? Your employees or co-workers,
someone who works for the organization,
helping you serve the external customers.
Surprisingly, employees inside an organization
are able to offer the most outstanding
ideas, but people often treat them as
a mere cog in the wheel and generally
do not tend to listen to them as their
job roles may not be glamorous or they
may not be in the senior position of the
organization. But, to improve the overall
efficiency and performance of an organization,
the top management should more often sit
with their workforce and seek their views.
Or, if we simply put it, the organization
should use them up to their fullest potential.
Motivating the
Internal Customers
It’s motivation
that moves mountains, not money! People
work for a motley of reasons. For most
of them, it has something to do with
a fat pay packet. But, for some, there
is something more than money. Have you
ever thought why people often stay in
the same job for a long time - and at
the same time enjoy it? It’s Surprising!
A true fact is that every human being
has a craving for recognition of the
good work he or she does, and not often
a monetary reward brings motivation
as much as a good word of encouragement
can do!
The foundation for excellence
is laid by developing a highly motivated
team. It starts with treating people
in the company with the respect they
deserve and nurturing an environment
where success becomes a foregone conclusion.
The ORANGE story
Orange Group is famous
for their broad range of voice and data
communication services worldwide. The
Orange management encouraged their employees
to throw ideas on how the company is
run. The ‘Bright Ideas’
scheme enabled employees to suggest
ways to improve the business. The management
sought for ideas in different fields
like new products, enhancement of customer
services, system for streamlining an
internal process etc. In 2002, their
employees suggested a staggering 4,931
ideas! Apart from that, Orange has an
‘Internal Communications Network’,
which is a focus group of staff members
who share ideas and best practices and
get feedback on the views of their colleagues
on a variety of issues. These measures
of listening to the “Internal
Customers” help Orange to stay
ahead of their competitors.
•
EXTERNAL CUSTOMERS
Are you tuned to the market buzz? This
may seem as to be a fairly simple question,
but often it is not. No matter how important
listening to internal customers are, ultimately
it is the external customers who pay for
the product, give us revenue and profit.
So, it is equally important, if not more,
to listen to our external customers –
the market. Bill Gates suggests, “Your
most unhappy customers are your greatest
source of learning.”
Listening
techniques
Some of the most commonly
used listening techniques are:
•
Focus groups - You
invite a set of customers to a common
venue for a discussion and records
their opinions.
•
Individual interviews - You can
talk to your friends, neighbors
and relatives, to find out what
they think about the product in
terms of their expectations and
how much has been fulfilled.
•
Surveys - A survey is the most
appropriate data-collection technique
if you need to collect responses
from a widely dispersed set of people.
•
Clinics – Clinics provide
the opportunity to ask the customers
to examine product samples and quantify
their feelings about the relative
importance of certain aspects of
the product.
•
Internet - Internet can be used
in many ways to interact and listen
to the customers - by launching
blogs where customers can post their
ideas, tying up with popular Internet
sites to run a quick survey or mail-in-questionnaires,
conducting e-surveys through market
research groups.
The DELL story
Let’s take the example of Dell.
In Dell, they don't make design decisions
based on style alone. Customer input
is a huge driver. That is why they have
in-house usability labs, where Dell
engineers test their own concepts alongside
the competitors'. They watch and learn
and shower their customers with the
finest of the products in the market.
Because, Dell believes that it’s
hard to do wrong thing if you are listening
to the voice of the customer.
•
CUSTOMER NEEDS - Don’t
just WOO them WOW them!
It’s
clear that success in developing a product
hinges on listening to your customer
and meeting their needs. A customer’s
need can be divided into three categories:
• Fundamental
• Performance
• Excitement
Fundamental
– Fundamental need is the bare
minimum expectations that a customer
has from a product or service. These
needs are so fundamental that customers
don’t even ask for them -- they
simply expect them to be there.
Performance
– Performance decides how your
product or service is positioned in
the market with respect to your competitors’
offerings. As performance increases,
customer satisfaction will increase
in direct relationship.
Excitement
– Excitement is what causes the
customer to choose one particular option
over all others.
The diagram below will
help explain this.
LEOSM
Consulting
The
Ice Cream Maker introduced the concept
of LEOSM (Listen, Enrich, and Optimize)
which is the next generation quality system. Read more
