Dr.

Saqib Rehman Lecture 3 TQM MCOM II CFE Group of Colleges

CUSTOMER SATISFACTION
Question:-Who is a Customer? Discuss customer satisfaction according to Teboul.
The most important asset of any organization is customers. An organizations success depends on how
many customers it has, how much they buy, and how often the buy. Customers that are satisfied will
increase in numbers, buy more, and buy more frequently. Satisfied customers also pay their bills
promptly, which greatly improves cash flow – the lifeblood of any organization.

Increasingly, manufacturing and service organizations are using customer satisfaction as the measure of
quality. The importance of customer satisfaction is not only due to national competition but also due to
worldwide competition. This fact is reflected in Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award where
customer satisfaction has high importance in the criteria. Similarly, customer satisfaction standards are
woven throughout ISO 9000: 2005. Customer satisfaction is one of the major purposes of a quality
management system.

Total Quality Management (TQM) implies an organizational obsession with meeting or exceeding
customer expectations, so that customers are delighted. Understanding the customer‟s needs and
expectations is essential to winning new business and keeping existing business. An organization must
give its customers a quality product or service that meets their needs at a reasonable price, which includes
on-time delivery and outstanding service. To attain this level, the organization needs to continually
examine their quality system to see if it is responsive to ever-changing customer requirements and
expectations.

Types of Customers
1. Internal Customers
1. The customers inside the company are called internal customers.
2. As there is a flow of work, product and service in the organization, each department is dependent
on the other. In this, each department or each quality management unit is considered as a
customer by the previous department and as a supplier for the next department. Similarly every
person in a process is considered as a customer of the preceding operation. This explains the
concept of internal customer.
2. External Customers
 The customers outside the company are called external customers.
 In other words, an external customer is the one:
 who uses the product or service ;
 who purchases the product or service; or
 who influences the sale of the product or service.

Customer Satisfaction
As emphasized so far, in today‟s buyer‟s market „the customer is the king‟. Even the definition of quality,
„quality is what customer wants‟, emphasizes on the customer requirements. In other words, quality is a
measure of customer satisfaction. It is obvious that business cannot survive without satisfied customers.
Therefore TQM‟s purpose is meeting or exceeding customer expectations, so that the customers are
delighted. It is understood that the customer satisfaction must be the primary goal of any organization.
Therefore it is essential that every employee in the organization understands the importance of the
customer.

Teboul Model of Customer Satisfaction:

Dr. Saqib Rehman Lecture 3 TQM MCOM II CFE Group of Colleges

The customer‟s needs are represented by the circle and the square depicts the product and services offered
by the organization. Total satisfaction is achieved when the offer matches the need, or the circle is
superimposed on the square. The goal is to cover the expected performance level better than the
competitions. That part of square that lies within the circle is perceived by the customers as satisfying,
and the part of the square outside the circle is perceived as unnecessary. It is important that the
organization listen to the voice of the customers and ensure that its marketing, design, production, and
distribution processes truly meet the expectation of the customers.
Customers‟ satisfaction seems simple enough, and yet it is far from simple.
• Customer Satisfaction is subjective, hence hard to measure
• Customer Satisfaction should not be viewed in a vacuum
Customer Perception of Quality
• Performance
• Features
• Service and technical support
• Warranty
• Price
• Reputation
Customer feedback
1. To discover customer dissatisfaction
2. Discover relative priorities of Quality
3. Compare performance with competition
4. Identify customer‟s needs
5. Determine opportunities for improvement
Modes of feedback
1. Comment card – Service industry
2. Customer Questionnaire – mail, telephone
3. Focus groups – like a Group Discussion
4. Toll free telephone numbers – complaints
5. Customer visits – B2B
6. Report card – send to customer every quarter
7. The internet – blogs
8. Employee feedback – why problem?
9. Mass customization – variety at affordable cost

Customer Service Quality

Strategies that have produced significant results in production are often harder to implement in a service
environment. Thanks to the teachings of Deming, Juran, and others, significant strides have been made in
manufacturing. The same results have been slower in service organizations or service activities in
manufacturing. Customer service is the set of activities an organization uses to win and retain customers‟
satisfaction. It can be provided before, during, or after the sale of the product or exist on its own.
Elements of customer service are:

Organization
1. Identify each market segment.
2. Write down the requirements.
3. Communicate the requirements.
4. Organize processes.
5. Organize physical spaces.
Customer Care
6. Meet the customer‟s expectations.
7. Get the customer‟s point of view.
8. Deliver what is promised.
Dr. Saqib Rehman Lecture 3 TQM MCOM II CFE Group of Colleges
9. Make the customer feel valued.
10. Respond to all complaints.
11. Over-respond to the customer.
12. Provide a clean and comfortable customer reception area.
Communication
13. Optimize the trade-off between time and personal attention.
14. Minimize the number of contact points.
15. Provide pleasant, knowledgeable, and enthusiastic employees.
16. Write documents in customer-friendly language.
Front-line people
17. Hire people who like people.
18. Challenge them to develop better methods.
19. Give them the authority to solve problems.
20. Serve them as internal customers.
21. Be sure they are adequately trained.
22. Recognize and reward performance.
Leadership
23. Lead by example.
24. Listen to the front-line people.
25. Strive for continuous process improvement.

Handling complaints
• Accept feedback
• Empower front-line employees to resolve
• More inspection does not solve it; find the root cause
• Communicate complaint to everyone in firm
• Contact complainant and put mind at ease
• Be proactive about customer needs

Question:- Discuss KANO Model of product development and customer satisfaction./ How needs
are translated into requirements?
The Kano model, which is shown in Figure, conceptualizes customer requirements. The model represents
three major areas of customer satisfaction. The first area of customer satisfaction, represented by the
diagonal line, represents explicit requirements. These include written or verbal requirements and are
easily identified, expected to be met, and typically performance related. Satisfying the customer would be
relatively simple if these were the only requirements.

The second area of customer satisfaction represents innovations, as shown by the curved line in the upper
left corner of the figure. A customer‟s written instructions are often purposefully vague to avoid stifling
new ideas during conceptualization and product definition. Because they are unexpected, these creative
ideas often excite and delight the customer. These ideas quickly become expected.

The third and most significant area of customer satisfaction represents unstated or unspoken requirements,
as shown by the curve in the lower right corner of the figure. The customer may indeed be unaware of
these requirements, or they may assume that such requirements will be automatically supplied. Basic
specifications often fail to take real-world manufacturing requirements into account; many merely are
based on industry standards or past practice. These implied requirements are the hardest to define but
prove very costly if ignored. They may be rediscovered during an after-the-fact analysis of lessons
learned.

Realistically, the customer doesn‟t buy a specification; the customer buys the product or service to fulfill
a need. Peter Drucker once said, “Customers don‟t buy products, they buy results.” People don‟t buy
products; they buy transportation or status. Customers are loyal to whatever best helps them achieve their
Dr. Saqib Rehman Lecture 3 TQM MCOM II CFE Group of Colleges
desired outcome. Just meeting a customer‟s needs is not enough; the organization must exceed the
customer‟s needs.

Customer Retention
Customer retention is more powerful and effective than customer satisfaction. Customer retention
represents the activities that produce the necessary customer satisfaction that creates customer loyalty,
which actually improves the bottom line. Customer satisfaction surveys, focus groups, interviews, and
observations can help determine what customers think of a service or a product. However, what people
say and think is often different from what they do. Customers may be delighted with the tropical oils and
aromas in a high-priced, well-advertised hair-care product but still end up buying the generic equivalent.

Therefore customer satisfaction should also be measured by using the hard measures of cash register
receipts, market share, the level of customer retention, and the number of referrals from customers. The
better companies have established a link between customer satisfaction and the bottom line. The analysis
identifies the number of customers and the revenue at risk.

Customer retention moves customer satisfaction to the next level by determining what is truly important
to the customers and making sure that the customer satisfaction system focuses valuable resources on
things that really matter to the customer. Customer retention is the connection between customer
satisfaction and the bottom line. Likewise, high employee retention has a significant impact on high
customer retention. One way companies can manage customer retention is to pay attention to their present
employees and to who they are hiring.