Client Orientation and the Effective Ways for Continuous Improvement - Term Paper Example

Running head: Client Orientation and Continuous Improvement Client Orientation and the Effective Ways for Continuous Improvement Insert Insert Grade Course Insert Tutor’s Name 31 March 2012 Outline I. Abstract II. Introduction III. Client orientation IV. Market orientation V. Organizational improvement VI. Conclusion VII. Works Cited Abstract Success and growth in business cannot be achieved without good business administration principles. A satisfied customer is integral in the growth and success of any business enterprise. Continued success in business can only be achieved through efficient customer care and client orientation strategies that emphasize the value of the customer in any business. Developing long term relationships with clients can only be done through understanding customer needs and providing high quality services at all times. To succeed in the highly competitive modern business environment, administrators and managers need to prioritize customer needs and customer satisfaction to facilitate a strong customer service chain. They should organize and manage all processes in their organizations with an aim of attracting and retaining customers through customer focused practices and strategies. This can be done through creating guidelines and strategies, improving the skills and competencies of their employees, and creating quality benchmarks and methods of measuring customer satisfaction effectiveness in their companies. All managers and staff must understand the importance of customer service and should be able to link it to customer orientation. By recognizing that the company benefits most from loyal customers through generation of more profits and creating a good image to the public, they must identify and utilize efficient customer service delivery principles to be used by all employees and position the same services in a competitive manner in the market. Commitment to continued improvement can only be done through continued management and monitoring of customer service quality. Introduction Customer orientation holds that the main task of the organization is to determine the perceptions, needs, and wants of the target markets and to satisfy them through the design, communication, pricing and delivery of appropriate and competitively viable offerings (Kotler 41). All external and internal customers in a company want provision of good quality products and services in time and in a continuous manner. To achieve this, an organization must put in place strategies and guidelines that makes satisfying the needs of their customers their primary objective with the long term goal of developing and sustaining a long time beneficial customer relationship. Customer and client satisfaction should be the ultimate goal of all firms because both theoretical and empirical research links a firm’s business performance to the satisfaction of its clients (Morgan, Anderson& Mittal 151). To succeed in client orientation and continued improvements, the company must be willing to provide services effectively and efficiently to put enhanced customer service habits in action as research has indicated that service quality has been increasingly recognized as a critical factor in the success of any business (Hossain & Leo 350). The management must institute strategies that impart quality consciousness in all processes in the customer service chain. Developing high quality standards in all processes will reduce both internal and external customer dissatisfaction and create a good collaborative environment. This will increase efficiency in all operations in various departments in the organization reducing time wastage and unproductive past times. In positioning the company in customer orientation and customer care, it must provide its employees with capability and resources to improve customer service. They must be trained and given skills in problem solving. This will reduce customer dissatisfaction over small matters and reduce time wasted due to lack of capacity to solve customer issues. Each individual must be responsible for the tasks he performs in a company. By being answerable to failures and being acknowledged for successes, most employees will be motivated and strive to exceed the company’s expectations with improvement in the overall performance and quality of the products and services. All departments and all employees must support each other in all processes of the company. They should approach everyday tasks as a team. The management should understand its employees and know their strengths and weaknesses. The company should put in place working strategies to utilize the strong points of all employees by using their qualifications, skills, and characters. Continuous improvement in business requires allowing creativity and flexibility in the employee’s ways of doing things (Greenwood 26). They will be continually seeking new methods and ways of doing things better. By allowing and supporting these changes, the management will create a positive attitude of change and it will be easier to develop the skills and capabilities of its staff. This fosters the culture of continued improvement and the business will always be a step ahead of its competitors. Business managers must cultivate and develop a good working relationship with their employees by opening efficient communication channels. Bad internal customer relationships ultimately will be passed on to the external customers. It is necessary then to make sure the employees are satisfied with their terms and conditions. They will be better placed to advance the companies goals when they are satisfied. This can be done by providing good remunerations, assigning tasks according to skill, opening up communication channels and putting down guidelines and instructions focused towards customer satisfaction. The management must have a strong commitment and provide good leadership that focuses on the future (Greenwood 27). The client focus principle must be gradual and persistently advanced through employee participation. The management should have clear and achievable targets in line with the company’s vision. When employees own the process, it becomes a source of pride and motivates them to do better. This will add value to the business and make a big difference in the company’s overall objectives. The management must invest in professional development of its employees. The customer demands and needs change over time and the employees must be equipped with the necessary skills and expertise needed to face future challenges. This should be done through training, facilitation, and improvement of technology that creates a platform for developing new services and products and the ability to provide them efficiently. All training should be focused at developing and retaining the desired customer orientation attitude as per business strategy. Regular trainings, seminars, and workshops should be organized by the management to consolidate the gains made in client orientation positioning. The management should have a long term strategic plan on the employees by developing an effective reward and recognition system that motivates employee’s full participation in customer care services. By actively reducing the employee turnover in the business, the company will gain through optimized employee performance at all times. Highly qualified personnel in all departments will increase the level of professionalism in all operations of the business. This will have multiple benefits from efficiency, innovation, and generation of new ideas. This will optimize the workload of each employee, who will provide high quality services and products. The business organization must provide favorable work environment free from emotional stress arising from sexual and other forms of harassment. This will facilitate the employee’s maximum productivity and ability to remain focused on the day to day tasks as outlined in the organizations strategic plan. An open and supportive work environment should built employee satisfaction and security in the company. The working environment should also be safe, free from crime, safety hazards, and environmental hazards that can hamper employee’s productivity due to lack of concentration. Effective and maximum output is only possible when the employees well being is well looked after. The management employees and the community should liaise and come up with good policies to identify and minimize the environmental and security risks that could negatively influence working conditions of the employees. Decision making processes in a customer focused company need to be effective and quick. This can be done by decentralizing the decision making authority to allow all departments take part in the process. Individuals who closely interact with the customers are best suited to understand the customer needs and requirements and they should be given a chance to develop good working methods through resource changes in the service delivery methods. Integrated decision making involving all departments should be fostered and directed in such a manner to improve customer focus and service. Key decisions however should be thoroughly evaluated to test their impact on the company’s objectiveness. This should go hand in hand with capitalizing in investment opportunities, which should be prioritized to be in line with the long term strategic plan of the company. It is the duty of the business administrators to effectively review and evaluate all investment decisions to avoid making unproductive investment decisions. In line with continuous improvement principles, the company should remodel its existing organization structures to improve on customer service and process efficiencies where weaknesses exist. This should fast tract growth through efficient working processes in the company. To successfully develop customer orientation and customer care principles in a company. Various measures should be taken to improve operational efficiencies and productivity. The management should come up with strategic investments which should support the existing departments continually improve efficiency by lowering the costs of operation as much as possible. They should also keep investing in emerging information technologies which would lead to greater use of the internet, transactional processing software’s and hardware upgrades that would position the company in a position able to utilize future opportunities as soon as they arise. Customer focus and services are provided by a coordinated effort of departments at all levels. Critical business processes that improve customer services and reduce costs should be oriented towards satisfying customer needs. The overall effect of improving operation efficiencies would be to improve productivity thereby increasing the profit margins of the company. The relationship between service quality and customer satisfaction is closely related. The work of multiple researchers has indicated that satisfaction is an antecedent to service quality, which then directly affects buyer’s behavioral intentions (Oliver 48). Perceived service quality is derived from the individual service encounter between the customer and the service provider (Bitner 82). Hence, every company should be committed towards continual improvement by having clear objectives and policies that govern quality of service, products, and customer care. These policies should be integrated in all processes of the company from the top to the bottom and they should be designed in such a manner that they strengthen each other in a mutually beneficial relationship. Customer orientation To provide quality services and achieve customer satisfaction, it is necessary to understand customer’s wants and provide products and services that meet their requirements. The company should acquire information about customer requirements that will facilitate quality improvement and allow the company to focus on the critical processes that result in customer satisfaction. This should be done through efficient communication channels from customers and understanding the emerging trends of target customers. This can be done through segmentation of customers into specific groups according to their needs and preferences. This will help the company use different communication tools and services to meet the specific customer preferences. The business is best suited to succeed in customer orientation and customer care when it efficiently put down strategies to learn the customer’s needs and preferences by having adequate communication channels for the customer and having customer feedback programs and follow up. The company should strive to build collaborative business relationships with their customers that will make the customer reuse its products and services over and over again. Putting in place quality services, products, and all points in the business will create customer trust and retain them for longer periods. Market Orientation Market orientation entails combined departments engaging in activities geared towards developing an understanding of customer‘s current and future needs and the factors affecting the sharing of this understanding across departments (Kotler 41). The efforts lead to the various departments engaging in activities designed to meet select customer needs (Kohli and Joworski 3). The employees, departments, and customers should have a mutually beneficial relationship. An organization that manages to develop this balancing act will see increased profits due to customer retention and employee satisfaction. The customer’s feedback should be sought and the recommendations worked upon as soon as possible. Monitoring performance is essential as it is cheaper; retaining an existing customer costs about one-fifth as much as attracting a new one. Customer defection is the worst thing that can happen to a business (Kotler 52). Although services are more difficult to evaluate than tangible products that cannot be scientifically inspected and evaluated for quality before the purchase takes place, customer satisfaction evaluation should be done and monitored regularly. They should be compared with the market share holding against competitors as emphasized by Stanley and John. “the company must make a long term commitment to understand their customers’ expectations and how they change, motivate their employees to view customer satisfaction as the primary objective monitor customer satisfaction frequently and stay in touch with customers after the sale’(Stanley and John ,1) It is virtually impossible to satisfy all customers 100%. Complaints are bound to arise at all times, the company should have efficient, and rapid tools to address them amicably. The customer is always right and they should be treated as such. All products and services should be provided in time according to the specified periods. It should be a business policy not to let customers wait. All customer complaints should be solved and it should be the company policy to ensure they are solved rapidly. Continual Improvement Continued improvement is a never ending process that is guided by several principles that bring substantial lasting and positive changes in the organization. It is centered through identifying opportunities for improvement to produce better products and services for customers and is credited with exceeding customer expectations, satisfying customers, retaining work forces over time among other benefits. Its key principles are based on the following. 1. The customer comes first 2. All work is part of a process 3. Quality improvement never ends 4. Prevention is achieved through planning 5. Quality happens through people Quality improvements emphasizes on identifying and understanding customer needs, dreams preferences and expectations and anticipates exceeding customer expectations thereby preventing customer dissatisfaction. All the services must meet the requirements of all the stakeholders by listening to their voices. It encompasses a holistic view that provides measures of influencing a final product or service positively. Factual approach to decision making is practiced. Quality improvement principles involve all people from the raw material suppliers up to the final end consumer. Quality improvement seeks to identify the root causes of a problem and identifying solutions that improve the whole process rather than improving isolated functions thereby benefiting the whole system. It emphasizes on process optimization to meet the requirements of all stakeholders regardless of all the challenges. Continued improvement is emphasized at all times even when satisfactory solutions to existing problems are obtained because no matter how good the services are, the customers will continually expect better services (Ting 420). This leads to achievement of the highest levels of quality and performance excellence. The organization must also continually learn so that its capacity for process improvement is continually enhanced at all times. Organizational Improvement Organizational improvement can only be achieved through quality improvement from the start to the end of the system. There must be total commitment of the senior management and leadership through consistent adhering to quality improvement. They should instill the culture of continued improvement and quality such that it becomes a way of working. This has the potential to improve the way an organization operates over a long time. Conclusion In today’s business world superior quality and customer satisfaction is the key to survive in the market. The management should develop quality policies and strategies that will allow flexibility of the organization to suit customers changing needs. This can only be done through resource allocation and continued training and empowerment of employees. Works cited Ajay, Kohli and Bernard Jaworsk. “Market Orientation: The Construct, Research, Propositions, and Managerial Implications.” Journal of Marketing. 54 1990 Bitner Mary Jo. “Evaluating service encounters: The effects of physical surroundings and employee responses.” Journal of Marketing, vol 54, 2:69-82 Ding Hooi Ting. “Service quality and satisfaction perceptions: Curvilinear and Interaction Effect”, The international journal of bank marketing, 22(6) 2004 Greenwood, Bob. "Client orientation - open heart surgery on the business.” S S G M, Service Station & Garage Management 1 Feb. 2005: ABI/INFORM Trade & Industry, ProQuest. Web.  31 Mar. 2012. Kotler, Philip. Strategic Marketing for Nonprofit Organizations (Rev Ed.) New Jersey: Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, 1988. Print Kotler, Phillip. “Marketing’s New paradigm: What’s Really Happening Out There ", Planning Review, September -October 1992. Mohammed, Hossain and Shirley Leo. 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