TABLE OF CONTENTS Now that you have completed this workbook, you should have a much clearer and more up-to-date understanding of what caring for the customer is all about, and why it is important. Focusing on a customer is not just a temporary fashion, like some ideas about management that people make a big fuss about and forget after a year or two. The more perceptive leaders of commerce and industry, like C sar Ritz, who said 'The customer is never wrong', have long understood that success for service industries (such as Ritz's hotels) was utterly dependent on being able to please the customer.
It's taken other organizations longer to come round to the idea, but US management experts began to take it up at over 50 years ago, and eventually it reached the rest of the world. In the last 15 years or so, 'caring for the customer' has reached non-commercial organizations too.
It is true that in the past, many organizations particularly in manufacturing and the public sector used to be able to soldier on without worrying too much about what their customers thought. You could have any colour as long as it was black, said Henry Ford. If they want quality, they'll be prepared to wait for it, said the manufacturers.
Firms now have to compete for customers by every means at their disposal. Customer care is one of the things that can give that crucial competitive edge.
At the same time, government has been...
