Focus on Customer Satisfaction Part 2: What You “Do” Speaks Volumes in the World of Custom Cabinets
Dating back to the 1950's and still very relevant today, W. Edwards Deming recommended that to exceed customer requirements, business processes should be placed in a continuous feedback loop so that managers can identify and change the parts of the process that need improvements. Deming created a (rather oversimplified) diagram to illustrate this continuous process, commonly known as the PDCA cycle for Plan, Do, Check, and Act:
In part one of this series on customer satisfaction; we focused on the need to ‘plan’ for customer satisfaction. This first planning step came with a caveat from Deming’s philosophy—perhaps requirement for fine custom cabinets which begins its day with inherent complexity—to not confuse things by taking on cumbersome and/or intricate systems to manage quality.
For students of brand management and in this case customer satisfaction, we enter into the discussion of ‘doing’ with the understanding that the quality of a brand is much more about what we do, than what we say.
Doing or implementing the plans for customer satisfaction goes beyond the narrow view of cost and efficiency and places emphasis on three key components to excellent performance: (a) an individual’s skills, (b) what they accomplish, and (c) how they do their work. In a survey on ‘Why Customers Leave’ conducted by the American Society for Quality, a staggering 68% of customers were lost to indifference on the part of the service provider.
So in addition to continually improving efficiency and job readiness, a successful firm that delivering factory direct kitchen cabinets to home improvement consumers understands that “means matter” and will remember when they hire and train, to be clear about the systems, policies, and methods that are expected from employees to follow.
Typically, people don’t fail in their jobs because they’re technically incompetent; instead, it’s their soft skills and behavioral issues that get in the way.
In conclusion, “Show Rather than Talk about Customer Service” and remember these key points.
- It’s a matter of who you are, what you believe in and how you act when no one’s looking.
- Customer satisfaction is a byproduct of how your customer experiences what you do.
- Experience is shaped by a series of interactions with the company.
- Great customer experiences are built not on words, but actions.
*Key: If your products or services are very similar in features, benefits, and price to the competition, what you do in terms of serving the customer is the (Tie Breaker).
Stay tuned for part 3 as we look at the next step in the PDCA cycle, 'Check' or measuring for customer satisfaction.
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