6: Summary

6 Summary

• No-one can afford to be complacent about the quality of customer care they provide:

  • no organization is perfect;

  • customers' needs are always changing.

• The only way to know for certain what your customers think of your service is to ask them.

• In both production and services, the CASCADE formula is an effective route to quality of service and total customer satisfaction:

  

• Delivering customer care depends on the ability of higher management to establish a customer care culture:

  • it must start at the top;

  • it must involve everyone in the organization;

  • it must have complete commitment from all levels of management.

• In order to produce or provide a high-quality product or service that satisfies customers' needs, staff first have to know what standards they are expected to achieve. The standards then have to be monitored and areas for improvement identified.

• Standards should be:

  • based on the needs of customers;

  • unambiguous;

  • achievable within the available resources;

  • agreed with the staff who have to achieve them.

• Skilful supervision and a clear example are the key to providing total customer satisfaction at the level of the workteam.