The Hindu Business Line : Make customers succeed bookmark

Business excellence is all about exceeding any competitor on six fronts, says Pravin Rajpal in Achieving Business Excellence ( www.landmarkonthenet.com). These are innovation, product quality, cost competitiveness, delivery, customer satisfaction and service. He begins the chapter on customers with a great quote of Robert Half, thus: “When the customer comes first, the customer will last.” Then, there is Sam Walton’s wisdom, that there is only one boss, the customer. How so? “He can fire anybody in the company from the chairman to managers, simply by spending his money somewhere else.”

Rajpal advises organisations to invert themselves so that the top management is at the bottom of the triangle with the base up. Customers are at the top, and they are followed by front-line supervisors, functional management, and middle management. “Customer’s directives and expectations to the marketplace are loud and clear – ‘give us more for less’ and fulfilment of this expectation alone can create customer delight,” argues the author. It is no longer a case of trade-off between quality and price, as differentiators, he says. Give them both, to remain globally competitive, advises Rajpal. Move from customer satisfaction to customer success, he urges. Offer, therefore, products that make customers “more productive, competitive, healthier, smarter, comfortable and faster.” Easy on the eye, with a PowerPoint type of presentation.

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