When you break quality management down, one area that cannot be overlooked is the customer focus. Whether it’s a potential buyer or a loyal customer, focusing on their needs can keep you a step or two ahead of the competition. In addition, when word of mouth starts to spread about your business, you want the feedback to be positive and consistent.
There are several ways a company needs to focus on their customers:
Today’s Customers
Take the time to review how today’s customers feel about your business, product, or service. If you only own a business online, send out a mass email asking for feedback on your most important focused area. You could increase the information by adding polls to your website. Most importantly, you can utilize testing markets with promotions, special offers, and a variety of other choices.
A brick and mortar company will need to use mail drops, in-house sales, and even something like a consensus form involving loyal customers. Taking the time to look into advertising strategies and new product or service options can also play a major role in the amount of information accumulated.
Building knowledge around today’s customers is going to help you keep the customers you already have, and start learning more about what they want in the future.
Future Customers
In order to see what your future customers look like starts with understanding where your business, product, or service is headed. Do you have a 5-year plan? Most successful companies do, but you cannot wait until year 4 to start figuring it all out. Consistent businesses are always a step ahead of the consumer. Once you release a new product, one department will solely oversee the positive and negatives throughout the first six months or so. Typically there is also ‘creative’ department that focuses on future products.
Most smaller businesses cannot afford to have two separate departments. Instead, you spend a countless amount of hours trying to do everything with 1-5 employees. Even if you are utilizing twenty employees, these individuals will be taken away from their “everyday duties,” which means there will be areas of the company that suffer. This is where your quality management will be extremely important.
It will be necessary to know the strengths and weaknesses of your employees. This will allow you to delegate the additional work accordingly and receive the best information about future customers, without hurting other areas of the business.
Delivering the best product or service starts and ends with quality management. One of the biggest components involving quality management is pre-planning, especially when it involves customer service. Once you are able to fully understand what your customers will want and expect, it will be much easier to compete for the best products or services in your niche, as well as continue to present your business as a reputable company. If you are able to integrate all of these tips in customer focus, we imagine your business will be a successful one.
