Book Presentation

The Customer Driven Company by Richard C. Whiteley

Book Abstract

MAIN IDEA

Customer satisfaction is now the core function of successful business and the key to maintaining a sustainable competitive advantage. The company or organization which best meets and exceeds customer expectations in both product quality and service quality will succeed. However, customer expectations and customer satisfaction must be measured not from the company’s perspective but solely from the viewpoint of the customer.

Creating satisfied customers on a consistent and ongoing basis is the key to business success. Companies that are organized around the central objective of creating satisfied customers are positioned to generate superior profits in an era of fierce commercial competition.

Important Note About This Ebook

This is a summary and not a critique or a review of the book. It does not offer judgment or opinion on the content of the book. This summary may not be organized chapter-wise but is an overview of the main ideas, viewpoints and arguments from the book as a whole. This means that the organization of this summary is not a representation of the book.

Summary of The Customer Driven Company (Richard C. Whiteley)

THE CUSTOMER DRIVEN COMPANY IDEAL

Main Idea

Customer driven companies provide high quality products not according to definitions of quality developed by the company but quality as the customer defines it in two specific areas - product quality and service quality.

Supporting Ideas

The business world today is dynamic and constantly moving. One area which has gained enormous significance over the past few years is a very simple concept - successful companies create satisfied customers by consistently giving customers what they want. These companies can be described as being customer-driven.

Customer driven companies work at improving both product-quality and service-quality to consolidate their competitive advantage. In fact, these companies continue to delight existing customers and win new customers by regularly producing enhanced products and services at lower prices.

Consider the two dimensions of quality:

1. Product quality, from the perspective of the customer, is what you get. That is, for a service, it is the tangible aspects of the service. For a tangible item, product quality is the reliability and general operation of that item.
2. Service quality, by contrast, looks at how you get the product. It includes everything from the helpfulness of sales staff, after-sales service, instruction manuals, delivery and all other aspects of dealing with the company supplying the goods or services.

Looking at this graphically:

To be successful over the longer time, companies needs to provide goods and services that fall within the shaded area - that is, they have high product quality and high service quality - from the perspective of the customer.

There are seven imperatives which work together to produce a well integrated organization which can consistently deliver high quality in both product and service. These are:

1. Creating a company vision which has keeping and serving the customer at its very heart.
2. Creating real intimacy between the company and the customer by saturating the company’s operations with the voice of the customer.