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Total Quality Management (TQM)

Using Customer Satisfaction To Drive Your Business


Introduction:

Few companies have the luxury of focusing on customer satisfaction to the point where making money is almost an afterthought. Efforts to satisfy customers obviously cannot be allowed to wipe out a company's financial resources, but improving customer satisfaction can stili be the company's driving force.

Xerox review of customer satisfaction:

  • Xerox's overall customer satisfaction has improved more than 43 per-cent since 1985.
  • in the category of low-volume copiers, Xerox improved 33 percent, compared to a 16 percent improvement for its competitors.
  • For the past several years, Xerox has been recapturing market share from Japanese competitors.
  • in the category of both mid- and high-volume copiers, Xerox remains the leader.

 

Steps in improving quality:

Hardware quality is a key quality indicator under the "technicai solu­tions".

Step 1.   Measure and benchmark the key quality indicator.

Step 2.   Trend the results.

Step 3.   Prioritize the key elements that affect the indicator (Paretoanalysis).

Step 4.   Use a leverage matrix to determine which elements to work on.

Step 5.   For each element chosen, perform a root-cause analysis to identify the drivers of dissatisfaction or the satisfaction inhibitors.Choose the key drivers that will be addressed.

Step 6.   Identify actions to reduce the driver defects. Assign owners toeach action. Track the impact of the actions.

The process continues with measurement of the key quality indicator to gauge the effects of the improvement actions—the return to Step 1 that closes the loop. By institutionalizing customer satisfaction, IBM Rochester steers an entire organization along a course charted by its customers. it according to one agenda; customer satisfaction. it analvzes and improves its processes in order to improve performance in its six primary satisfiers. it is not in the business of making computers or servicing computers or selling Solu­tions ; it is in the business ofsatisfying customers better than anyone else. That is what it means to use customer satisfaction to drive a business.