Customer Satisfaction

Introduction

Total quality environments requires that an organization make customer satisfaction its primary focus, and that keeping customers satisfied requires that the organization continually improve the goods or services it provides to the customers (Goetsch & Davis, 2021). This paper discusses customer satisfaction in the context of America Online (AOL) by listing who the customers are, how their needs are identified, and how those needs are satisfied. Particular attention is paid to IT-specific methods of determining customer needs.

Customers

For AOL, the external customers can be divided as follows: paying customers using dialup and non-paying customers who "bring their own Internet." A third class of external customers would be companies that choose to advertise on AOL's websites.

Internal customers are all the employees. This includes managers, executive assistants, subject matter experts, QA staff, software developers, customer support, sales, advertiser support, accountants, system administrators, and network engineers. I'm unfamiliar with the business side of AOL, and there are surely other types of employees besides accountants, sales staff, and advertiser support.

Determining Needs

Importance is placed on satisfying both external and internal customers, as both types of customers are needed for business survival. The needs of external customers are primarily self-identified - if customers are unable to connect to AOL's services, they know they have a need! Additional needs - ones that may be unknown to external customers - can be anticipated by an information-gathering plan which can include customer focus groups (Goetsch & Davis, 2021, p. 96-99). AOL’s competitors will also be doing this.

Additional approaches to determining external customer needs used in the IT industry include "vaporware" and "mechanical Turks." (da Costa, 2022) With vaporware, a company announces that it is working on a factitious product to judge the interest level of external customers. If interest is high, then development of the product actually begins; if not, no cost was invested.

Vaporware marketing, most commonly associated with building “pre-launch buzz” is a unique strategy that revolves around generating excitement and anticipation for a product or service that is still in its early developmental stages and not ready to be released commercially. (Grant, 2023)

With mechanical Turks (and with a similar idea called "the automatable agency"), a product is built that actually depends on humans to do the work. If the product is seen as popular and valuable, this product can be automated, which allows it to scale. If not, the product can either continue to be run manually, or it can be discontinued. (de Costa, 2022).

Internal customers' needs are primarily determined by the role they play within the company. For example, developers depend on QA testers, subject matter experts, and so on. These needs can be determined in various formal and informal methods (Goetsch & Davis, 2021, p. 97), but the needs are often implicit in the job title.

Satisfying Needs

Customer support teams satisfy the needs of external customers (either paying or nonpaying). Most members of the support teams are trained to address basic technical questions as well as billing questions. When they cannot satisfy a customer's needs, they are transferred to a higher-level support person. The needs of advertisers are met through sales teams and advertiser support teams: companies that advertise with AOL provide AOL with ad content (usually a graphic) as well as money to deliver the ad to our paying and non-paying customers. In return, we provide the advertisers with statistics about the number of customer views and click-throughs.

The needs of internal customers are, for the most part, met by other internal customers. For example, the needs of developers are met by QA testers, subject matter experts, and so on. Also, developers can meet the needs of other developers, almost always in an informal manner and with minimal or no interactions with management.

Conclusion

External and internal customers change according to both the maturity and the success of the company or organization in question. Determining the needs of these customers can be done in a variety of means, including some means that are specific to the IT industry. To maintain customer loyalty, it is necessary to continually improve the products and services the company offers as well as anticipate new customer needs.

References

da Costa, L. (2022, 24 August). The minimum viable nothing: Ideas to validate products without building them. https://lucasfcosta.com/2022/08/24/minimum-viable-nothing.html

Goetsch, D. L., & Davis, S. B. (2021). Quality management for organizational excellence: Introduction to total quality (9^th ed.). Pearson.

Grant, V. (2023, 4 August). Selling the invisible: vaporware marketing deconstructed. https://quantumidentitygroup.medium.com/selling-the-invisible-vaporware-marketing-deconstructed-8615b59ce552

What is Total Quality Management?

Introduction

This post follows Goetsch & Davis (2021)’s presentation of total quality management (TQM), focusing on its definition and common errors in implementing TQM. Next we look at two limitations of TQM given in a video by "megentlemen." The post concludes with recommendations about TQM implementation.

Definition and Characteristics of TQM

Total quality management (TQM) is a management approach that has the goal of achieving long term success through customer satisfaction. This is done by involving all members of an organization in a continuous effort to improve processes, services, products, and corporate culture. TQM strives to improve efficiency, reduce waste, and require consistent quality in company operations; crucial to achieving this is customer focus, continuous improvement, employee involvement, process-oriented thinking, and using all available data for decision making.

To understand this, we must first understand the concepts of “quality” and “total quality.” Goetsch & Davis (p. 3) give the following definition of the first concept: "Quality is a dynamic state associated with products, services, people, processes, and environments that meets or exceeds expectations and helps produce superior value." Expanding on this, they note that as standards change, what is viewed as a quality item (product, service, person, process, or environment) also changes, and that items must meet or exceed expectations (whose expectations?) and help produce superior value (for whom?). Superior value is unpacked as having three basic elements: "superior quality, superior cost, and superior service" (Goetsch & Davis, p. 3)

Total quality is the process of continually improving quality of products, processes, services, and costs. TQM is a management philosophy that achieves this process. Total quality is a competitive advantage, especially for companies operating globally.

Goetsch & Davis (p. 4) describes TQM using a graphic analogy involving a three-legged stool. The seat of the tool is labeled “customer focus,” and this represents the fact the customer is in the driver’s seat. Supporting this are the three legs of the stool: measures, people, and processes. Quality can and must be measured using statistical process control, benchmarking, and quality control tools. People are empowered to do their jobs the right way. Process is one of continual improvement. "'Good enough' is never good enough" (Goetsch & Davis, p. 4). To be more specific,

The distinctive characteristics of total quality are these: strategically based, customer focus (internal and external), obsession with quality, use of the scientific approach in decision making and problem solving, long-term commitment, teamwork, continual process improvement, bottom-up education and training, freedom through control, unity of purpose, and employee involvement and empowerment, all deliberately aimed at supporting the organizational strategy. (Goetsch & Davis, p. 4)

Notice the Orwellian phrasing here: “freedom through control”, “unity of purpose”, “'Good enough' is never good enough.” Along with this is the “scientific approach in decision making and problem solving,” which smacks of Taylorism (Nyland, 2024).

Implementation Errors

As can be expected, implementing TQM in an established company or organization is not a bloodless and pain-free affair. Goetsch & Davis identify five common errors (Goetsch & Davis, p. 13-14).

The first error is senior management delegation and poor leadership – this happens when senior management delegates the switch-over to TQM to a hired expert, as opposed to applying leadership to get all employees involved. Hired experts are still allowed in training or advisory roles.

Second is what Goetsch & Davis call “team mania.” This is the idea that for teams to be effective, there must be teamwork: “Supervisors must learn how to be effective coaches, and employees must learn how to be team players.” (Goetsch & Davis, p. 13)

Third, the deployment process can be done erroneously. TQM must be deployed in an all-or-nothing approach, and must be adopted by operations, budgeting, marketing, and all other departments.

When adopting TQM, some organizations assume that major proponents (Deming, Juran, Crosby, etc.) must be followed literally. Instead, TQM programs must be tailored to individual needs of the organization, and failure to do so is the fourth error.

Finally, there is confusion between TQM education and awareness vs inspiration and skill building. Knowing the goals and methods of TQM are different from being inspired by the concept and seeking out relevant training to be “part of the transformational process” (Goetsch & Davis, p. 14).

Limits in Implementation

There are (at least) two limitations of TQM implementation, described in the video (megentlemen, n/d): the cost of adopting TQM in time and money, and the fear of change.

Implementing TQM is a lengthy process, taking many years and requiring substantial training. Overall, it is an expensive and exhausting process. In terms of length-of-implementation, Goetsch & Davis present management-by-accounting as a kind of opposite to TQM, stating that TQM is a long-term concept whereas management-by-accounting is a short-term concept that leads to short-term strategies (Goetsch & Davis, p. 29).

The second limitation is the idea that fear of change, uncertainty, and doubt (FUD) are major roadblocks to implementing TQM. This places the blame for unsuccessful or difficult adoption of TQM on those attempting to use the system, not on TQM itself. The FUD excuse comes off as a description of why pyramid schemes fail, or why socialism fails (“socialism needs a better class of people”).

These two limitations should not be taken in isolation – to get people who don’t have FUD over TQM, it is necessary to “age out” those who do. Fortunately, implementing TQM is a lengthy process.

Recommendations

As a person who experienced a flawless and professional implementation of TQM by a former employer, I cannot recommend TQM be implemented in my place of work. Further, I would not recommend TQM even to my competitors. The reasons for this are as follows: the cultural assumptions of TQM, the inflated bureaucracy, the emphasis on process over innovation, problems with responsibility and authority, the conflation of leadership with management, and the "sacred cow" problem all make TQM antithetical to companies whose existance requires that they be innovative and "scrappy."

References

Goetsch, D. L. & Davis, S. B. (2021). Quality management for organizational excellence: Introduction to total quality (9^th ed.). Pearson.

megentlemen. (n/d). busi616_Total Quality Management. https://libertyuniversity.instructure.com/courses/812038/pages/watch-total-quality-management?module_item_id=87787197

Nyland, C. (2024, 24 March). Writing Red Taylorism into management history. Journal of Industrial Relations, 66(3), 484-504. https://doi.org/10.1177/00221856241238611