Quality is always in an ever-changing state. What was deemed good yesterday might not be considered good tomorrow. That means constant quality control and innovation have to be considered. There are many ways to maintain quality. Maintaining quality in the traditional sense is very different from choosing to do it with a more modern quality management system like Total Quality Management (TQM). Instead of detecting the problems, Total Quality strives to prevent them. Instead of meeting customer specifications, Total Quality tries to exceed customer expectations. By following a more modern quality management method, there are longer-term profits and continual improvement, and the customer satisfaction rates are higher.
Communication between the customer and a business is one of the most important pillars of healthy and functional cooperation between the two parties. Understanding the customers and their needs has long been the key to a successful management strategy. Employees can be excellent representatives of the community, and surveying them about their everyday struggles, duties, and responsibilities can reveal a lot of insightful information about their wishes and needs.
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TQM allows the company to perceive the management system as a whole entity instead of seeing it just as an output of the quality department. Total Quality makes the organization monitor all inputs from engineering, human resources, and production to service, finance, distribution, and sales. All of these functions impact the quality of all products or services of the organization. By embracing the entire process, companies have a chance to improve in most core areas like customer focus, total employee involvement, systematic approaches, and good communication.
Although the benefits of TQM are obvious, companies still need to consider if they are willing to go all in, which would mean reconstructing the existing barriers to make way for full involvement. Some companies are not willing to go as far with some managers complaining that their authority is being tested by the employees speaking up about issues at the early adoption stages of TQM. Nevertheless, with a culture that demands constant improvements in quality, feedback from the employees and customers is a crucial part of further development.
The Importance of Customer Satisfaction
In today's competitive market, it is important for every business to stand out, attract, and hold on to their customers. If a product or service manages to attract the attention of a customer, it is in the company's best interest to make the best impression with the quality of the product not only before, but also after the purchase. If the customer deems this transaction successful, he will be satisfied. Customer satisfaction is a major indicator of loyalty and customer repurchase; it increases customer lifetime value and reduces negative word of mouth. It is way easier and cheaper to retain customers than to bring in new ones.
The definition of customer satisfaction is also provided in the ISO series 9000:2000 standard. Customer satisfaction can be defined as customer contentment and customer perception concerning the level to which expectations have been satisfied. Customer complaints can also play a big part in determining the satisfaction level of the customer. Nevertheless, customer satisfaction is not equivalent to the absence of complaints.
There are several factors that influence a customer: technical quality of the product (safety, build quality, sustainability), reputation (perception of the customer about the company, product, or service in comparison to other competing brands), perception of the price point (sales, promotions, discounts, value in comparison to other competitors), interpersonal relationship quality (styles of communication, complaints, empathy), and service quality (competency of the sales personnel, response times, information digestibility).
Customer satisfaction can be achieved by the implementation of quality management systems. Depending on how they perform, customer satisfaction levels can either plummet or skyrocket. That is why it is important to understand in which cases each quality management system can be most effective. Sometimes it is hard to pinpoint why customer satisfaction is lower than expected. In this case, quality management systems can offer some beneficial tools.
Total Quality Management and Other Methods
Total Quality Management (TQM) is a system designed to improve quality across all levels. It employs the use of versatile teams to identify, analyze, and solve problems. It places attention on determining quality by understanding how the customer distinguishes quality.
It is important to understand that TQM is more of a philosophy than a method. It uses various controls, quality measurement, and improvement tools like histograms that help see how different variations look like, scatter charts that help identify the relationships between certain factors, Pareto analysis that highlights the major problems and inconsistencies, cause and effect diagrams like Fishbone to identify underlying problems.
If we compare Six Sigma to TQM, TQM aims to ensure that the internal regulations and standard procedures mitigate defects, while Six Sigma tries to lower the number of defects. Similar to TQM, Six Sigma ensures continuous success by reinforcing strict guidelines and process standards all across the production line to reduce errors.
Six Sigma aims to reduce defects in manufacturing and other processes by applying a statistical problem-solving methodology. It identifies deviations from the standard and tries to eliminate such inconsistencies. Lean, on the other hand, uses a minimalist philosophy that aims to increase efficiency by using minimum requirements for any process. This method focuses on determining customer needs and eliminating activities that are not valuable to the customers, thereby improving processes.
Real-world applications require different quality improvement methods and tools. There are fields where the slightest mistake can cost someone's life, like healthcare. This field requires the best possible quality tools that the Six Sigma method provides with its rigorous consistency and attention to detail. Other businesses like supermarkets and convenience stores are not as thorough in their product quality as they are focused on providing the most variety for a customer. In this case, methods like Lean that improve efficiency and reduce waste are more in line with the model of the company. In addition, mixing and matching these methods could prove beneficial, and combining methods like Lean and Six Sigma could lead to better results.
Focus on Customer Satisfaction in TQM
For a management system so dependent on quality, customer feedback and communication is crucial. Among all the existing excellence models, customer satisfaction is among the most important core values and is the basis of some of them like TQM as it is a vital element for initiating performance improvements.
There are several ways to reach customers: direct interaction, customer expectation analysis, and feedback. Maintaining these interactions and relationships between customers and employees can help employees understand customer needs and increase the indirect involvement of customers in product development processes.
Internal customer orientation strengthens practical features of TQM by observing organizational policies, regulations, and the culture of employees to assess the commitment of employees to improve service quality and customer satisfaction. Customer focus strategy can also be perceived as a corporate value of the company that characterizes the determination of the company to improve the levels of customer satisfaction.
A big part of what makes TQM so successful is the organizational culture and the commitment from the higher management, as well as shareholders. These factors are linked and depend on each other's success. It is frequently mentioned that knowledge management and a mature corporate culture and politics play a dominant role in attaining outstanding quality and performance improvements, increasing customer satisfaction.
Conclusion
Organizational sustainability and success benefit greatly from decent service quality as it is very closely associated with customer satisfaction. The customer focus principle in TQM has a considerable impact on customer's value perception. The customer-orientated approach of TQM uses customer feedback from surveys and interviews, processes them, and considers them in further product improvement and development. Furthermore, organizations can benefit from using knowledge management to adjust their strategies to conform to TQM while staying true to the core values, beliefs, and visions of the company.
There are still a lot of resources being used to research and analyze TQM and how companies can implement customer focus to maximize their gain. However, it is certain that if implemented correctly, TQM can yield positive financial results, increase productivity, and stabilize the competitive situation, as well as many other benefits that help the company in the long run.
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