Where? Oh, Where did my customers go?
By
Ever wonder who your customers
are? Ever wonder if you are giving your
customers the quality that they expect?
Ever wonder what quality really is?
Over the past year, I have taught
many seminars on Total Quality Management (TQM). In almost every instance, answers to these
questions were ill defined in the minds of the company's employees. The employees ranged from staff positions up
to the heads of the organization.
So who is the customer? The obvious answer is the person or
organization that pays you for your product or service. To understand the answer more completely,
however, let's explore some of the concepts of TQM.
TQM, as many of you know, is a
management philosophy of the nineties. It
is an evolution from earlier philosophies like Quality Circles and Just-In Time
(JIT), among others. Quality Circles
proved that teams of workers could consistently solve their problems more
efficiently than people higher up in the organization structure. Management only had to provide them the tools
with which to solve their problems and the latitude to make corrective action.
JIT was created as a manufacturing
philosophy to address poor product quality.
Along with many other things it taught us, we learned that you can't
inspect quality into a product. Quality
starts with the engineering design and each subsequent step in the process
requires quality execution. JIT allows any
employee to stop the production line if poor quality components arrive. Ultimately, out pops a quality product.
TQM extended this JIT principle to
all facets of the business and created the obvious extension that employees are
in reality customers of each other. Once
employees are considered customers, it becomes a logical step to realize that
they also have expectations relating to the "quality of the product"
they receive from others. Thus was borne
the concept of external and internal customers and the organization's need to
fulfill the quality expectations of both.
That takes care of the first
question, "Who is the Customer?"
Now all we have to do is supply a
quality product. So what is
quality?
Over the years I have watched many
people and organizations grapple with that question. The responses range from "Something that
satisfies the customers' needs at a price they are willing to pay," to
"I will know quality when I see it."
Many companies also use the term quality to define itself, e.g.,
"We believe in delivering the highest quality product to our
customer."
Evaluating quality relies on your
customers' perceptions. A customer who
buys your product or services has certain needs and expectations in mind. If the product or service meets or exceeds
those expectations time and time again, then, in the mind of that customer, you
are providing a quality product.
Defining those expectations
involves establishing specific, measurable criteria for each expectation, e.g.,
a customer will never get a busy signal when calling customer service, or,
customer orders received by 3:00 p.m. will be shipped the same day.
The easiest way to obtain
specifics for the quality of external or internal customer expectations is to
answer the six basic questions we have known since childhood. Who? What?
How? Where? When? and Why?
Each of the questions requires
explicit answers. Having explicit
answers allows you to create measurement mechanisms to assure that you are
achieving the quality you choose to deliver to the customer.
Notice I use the phrase
"choose to deliver". Each
market is divided into a number of market segments. Organizations attack specific segments by
tailoring the product, service, price and product image. If you change any of those, you can then
attack a different market segment.
Using the automobile industry to
illustrate this concept, General Motors attacks the market with a wide variety
of products, ranging from their top quality Cadillac to their lower quality
Chevrolets. Within each of those product
lines, they offer a number of models with varying options and prices. Each variation appeals to a slightly
different market.
TQM attacks quality from a
holistic viewpoint. The quality an
external customer receives is based on the quality received by each of the
internal customers.
Here is a short example illustrating
the application of TQM to an internal customer.
Let's assume all customer calls require a call back within 20 minutes
after the receptionist takes the message.
(Notice that the quality of response is definable and measurable.) If a sales representative receives the
message after 30 minutes or the message is indecipherable, the company fails to
achieve the desired quality of response.
What do you fix? Is this a performance problem with the sales
representative. Obviously not. Do you blame the receptionist? Prior to TQM, the receptionist might be
subject to a stern lecture on job responsibilities.
If you follow the principles of
TQM and also examine the expectations of the receptionist, you may also
discover unfilled expectations at that level, e.g., quiet, non-disruptive
environment, etc. If that is the case,
where do you look next?
Right in the laps of
management. As an internal customer,
management failed to meet the receptionist's needs and expectations and the
company ultimately failed to meet its quality standard for response time.
The concepts of TQM are more
extensive than identifying internal and external customers and establishing
definable and measurable quality standards.
I have found in many companies, however, that embracing just these two
concepts starts a fundamental change in an organization's treatment of its
employees and its approach to quality.
So don't wait until your customers have left to embrace these concepts. TQM applies to all types of organizations,
for profit and not for profit, government bodies, service organizations, etc.
Other important concepts of TQM
relate to team building and employee empowerment, but these concepts will have
to wait for a future article.