Within any organization, everyone has a customer.  Regardless of what we are hired to do, we are all doing it for a customer.  Be it an external customer (the obvious customer which orders our products/services, and pays us to perform or produce), and the internal customer (the fellow employee who comes to you with a request likely has an external customer somewhere behind that request).  

The customer's needs and expectations should be the driving force behind the decisions we make and the problems we solve.  So, too, with the efforts of the teams we form to improve performance.  As we improve quality, we need to be sure we are improving what matters to our customers, not what we think matters or what we want to improve only for our own sake.

In order to ensure that we are focused upon issues that really matter to our customers, the following general process is one which all teams should use as they approach their quality improvement initiatives.

TEAM QUALITY IMPROVEMENT PROCESS

Identifying Customers:  Determining who your team's primary customers and key customer segments are.  Your team may have both internal and external customers.

Clarifying Customer Needs and Expectations:  Finding out what these customers need and expect in the products and/or services your team provides.  Your team may already know 90% of what the customers need and expect.  Often, it is the remaining 10% your team doesn't already know that provides the greatest opportunity for improvement and differentiation. 

Identifying Customer Impact Improvement Opportunities:  Actively seeking customer feedback regarding your current product and/or service delivery and using that input to identify the critical areas for improvement that impact your customer's perceptions of your team and your company as a whole.

Developing a Team Charter:  Preparing a clear statement of the team's mission, objectives or goals, and operating parameters.  This document is based upon and reflects team learnings from the previous steps of; identifying customers; clarifying customer needs and expectations; and, identifying customer impact improvement opportunities.

Applying Customer-Centered Quality Improvement Tools and Techniques:  Using customer-focused problem solving methods and approaches to address the previously identified customer impact improvement opportunities.

Implementing Quality Improvements:  Making the changes (identified through the use of the customer-centered quality improvement tools and techniques) necessary to improve the customer's experience with and perceptions of the team and your company.

Assessing Results Using Customer-Centered Measures:  Putting in place ongoing methods and techniques for gathering customer feedback in order to continuously improve the customer's experience.

Now, I know what you are thinking.  'This is customer-service 101 stuff'.  'I learned this in my first year of business 25 years ago'.  However, as basic as all of this sounds, and as much of a foundation as all of this should be to any organization, most have forgotten the basics....the fundamentals.  Polish these, and build a concensus among all of your internal teams, and all else will follow.

Companies today have become so intense, so focused on what the competitors are doing, they lose sight of what they themselves are doing, and ultimately, what the customer wants.