4.1.1 A comment on customer satisfaction
The term "customer satisfaction" has taken on a meaning that equates to another widely heard phrase - meeting or exceeding customer needs or wants. This presupposes that the customer knows exactly what he or she wants. This is often debatable. Very few customers know, for instance, what they would like future video cameras or mobile phones, or car headlights and rear view mirrors to do. Most often, customer needs are directed by outcomes from research and development (R&D) in the production houses. These outcomes tell the customer what else might be available. This implies that the customer may not always be right (doesn't sound right, does it?) and it may not always be in the interest of the company to follow every desire of the customer. The essence of the saying "the customer is always right" is that the customer is at the heart of what the company does. This implies an attitude towards the customer, not only the work that a person does. Many nurses, for instance, are devoted to their profession but often wish patients were not a part of it. Academics are known (albeit rarely) to have expressed similar thoughts about students!
The important thing is to understand what the customer would like the organisation to do. Listening carefully and understanding that is crucial because it is easy to interpret what they say to what the company thinks they are saying and relate it to internal processes.
In meeting the customer's needs, it is essential the employees are enabled by management to do so. It is for the management to provide the necessary resources, motivation and authority to their employees to enable them to make the customer's transaction with the company a satisfying one.
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