Employee Surveys = Involvement and Empowerment

Ongoing customer satisfaction is a result of a focused and well-managed process for continuous improvement. Design your products and services to meet or exceed customer expectations, and you'll enhance your ability to grow your market share. Design the processes that provide those products and services to be performed in the most effective, efficient, reliable, and consistent manner possible, and you’ll enhance your ability to meet your organizational strategies. Proactively involve and empower your people in the previously mentioned steps, and you have the elements for gaining and sustaining long-term competitive advantage.

Even in organizations where there is a demonstrated understanding of this logic, many efforts to succeed in implementing strategies to achieve a more empowered workforce fail. Many times, this failure can be attributed to a lack of understanding regarding the nature of empowerment and the four basic elements required for successful implementation.

Involvement and Empowerment

One of the foundational principles of continuous improvement is “respect for employees demonstrated by employee involvement and empowerment.” The goal of this principle is respect. It involves genuine respect and the understanding that employees have the ability, based on their knowledge and experience, to add value to the organization’s success. While most organizational leaders intellectually and emotionally buy-in to this principle, the positive results of involvement and empowerment are sometimes elusive. To help understand why this occurs, let’s look at how the words “involvement” and “empowerment” are defined and used in a business environment.

Involvement is the ongoing process of informing employees and gathering input from them. This process results in a workforce that continuously thinks of ways to improve performance and acts in a manner consistent with that thinking. Involvement takes the form of information-sharing and can be accomplished in a number of ways. It can be achieved in state-of-the-company meetings, informal group sessions, one-on-one discussions, the Intranet, etc. Whatever the method, the objective must be to provide employees with an ongoing understanding of what is happening within the organization (and why), and how their actions impact the success of the organization.

Empowerment is the ongoing process of providing anyone in an organization with the ability to address anything that stands in the way of doing the right thing at any given time. It means that an employee is given the ability to solve a problem or improve a condition. It means that, at no time, does an employee feel ‘trapped’ in a situation. If something is standing in the way of a quality result, the employee can contribute to correcting that situation. Successful empowerment can be achieved by addressing four basic elements or “tools.”

Four Basic Elements of Empowerment

Belief
Employees need to genuinely believe the company’s leadership sincerely intends for them to be empowered. An employee also needs to believe that he or she has the capability of performing in an empowered manner. Rarely will an organization experience successful empowerment if employees do not believe management is supportive of their individual ability to solve a problem or improve a condition.

Information
Employees need to have information regarding the results of their actions, as well as information relative to the processes they are performing. In order to determine the need to solve a problem or improve a condition, employees need to receive feedback on these measures. If employees are unaware of the conditions that surround them, the chances of developing empowered actions are minimal at best.

Skills
Employees need the skills necessary to act in an empowered manner. These skills fall into two areas; technical skills and interpersonal skills. Technical skills involve those skills specific to an employee’s job. Acting in an empowered manner requires that an employee be trained and consistently updated on the technical skills needed to perform in their area of responsibility. Interpersonal skills involve the skills required for an employee to effectively work with others when acting in an empowered manner. These skills include effective communication and respect for themselves and others, as well as understanding personal styles and how they affect individual and team performance.

Opportunity
This element involves providing employees with the time, tools, and resources necessary to act in an empowered manner. Expecting empowered actions while neglecting the required time, tools, and resources will result in employee frustration. Additionally, it is extremely important to provide employees with the process and guidelines for being empowered. Employees need to understand the steps they can take to solve a problem or improve a condition. Without clearly defined guidelines and processes, many well-intentioned empowerment initiatives bring unsatisfactory and, in some cases, disastrous results.

How involved and empowered do employees in your organization feel? 

There is one way to find out – ask them. Conduct an Employee Perception Survey. Putting in place an effective employee feedback program is the responsibility of strong and confident leaders. In order to develop an involved and empowered workforce, an organization’s leadership team must provide the necessary coaching, guidance, and facilitation to foster its development. Identifying the areas employees feel are in need of special attention and focus will help direct those development efforts.

If you are trying to ensure a culture of employee involvement and empowerment, we can help. Call us toll-free at 1-800-999-6615, email us at mail@tweedweber.com and/or visit us on the web at www.tweedweber.com. Also, be sure to follow us on LinkedIn (Tweed-Weber, Inc.) and Twitter (@TweedWeber). Tweed-Weber can provide you with a proven method for obtaining employee feedback that can serve as the foundation for the elements of genuine employee engagement.

Are you providing unrivaled customer service?

Because the business climate in virtually all industries has become increasingly competitive, and the marketplace continues to change, it is even more important for all employees of an organization to demonstrate responsiveness and respect toward their customers. This means developing a whole new orientation toward customer service.

Business in general is becoming much more customer-focused in this new era of ubiquitous technology that allows for instant personal contact. Companies are recognizing that the degree to which they meet or exceed their customers' expectations will dictate their relative success in the marketplace. In order to be customer-oriented, it is important that your people understand these expectations and perform accordingly. It is also important that your people develop the knowledge, skills, and attitudes that enable and empower them to demonstrate customer responsiveness and respect.

Two Points of Focus

Unrivaled Customer Service begins with two points of focus, customer expectations and organizational outcomes. Customer expectations fall into two areas: needs and wants. When a customer's problem is solved, his or her needs are met. When a customer is made to feel good, his or her wants are satisfied. Providing unrivaled customer service means that your people understand both your customers' needs AND wants.

The first step in identifying what customers want and need is to ask them. Conducting a Customer Perception Survey to identify exactly how your customers view you is essential to understanding how to satisfy them in the future. Annual customer surveys are a best practice among the top organizations that taut unrivaled service.

Organizational outcomes fall into three areas: quality in fact, process outcomes, and final results. If your organization is not getting the outcomes it needs to survive and succeed, then you risk being marginalized in the market, or worse yet, going out of business. It is critical that you are able to balance customer expectations with organizational outcomes.

The Internal Customer/Supplier Chain

Experience shows that most external customer disappointments are created by internal process problems. Often, people within the organization are not working together to serve the customer. An effective way to deal with this is to clarify the internal customer/supplier chain. Every employee in your organization has other employees who are their internal customers. Everyone also has internal suppliers, people they depend on for support to do their jobs.

Organizations with a focus on unrivaled service work hard to clarify this internal customer/supplier chain. Every person needs to know precisely who his or her internal customers are, and what they need and want. Imagine everyone in your organization focusing on their internal customer, and working together to serve your external customers.

Knowing what your customers need and want and delivering it are two different things. The critical ingredients in are people and processes. First, your people must have the knowledge and skills to serve your customers effectively. Second, your internal processes must be designed for unrivaled service.

If you are trying to differentiate your organization through unrivaled service, we can help. Call us toll-free at 1-800-999-6615, email us at mail@tweedweber.com and/or visit us on the web at www.tweedweber.com. Also, be sure to follow us on LinkedIn (Tweed-Weber, Inc.) and Twitter (@TweedWeber). Tweed-Weber can help you identify what your customers need and want, not only today, but in the future, so that you can be the consistent market leader.

Why?

I’ve often been told I’m inquisitive by nature and that a childlike sense of curiosity permeates through my personality. I envision myself having been that caricature of an annoyingly sweet child always asking “Why? Why? Why?” as my parents silently pull out clumps of hair while grinding their teeth. Perhaps this is the reason I’ve found myself in the market research industry for the past five-plus years and enjoying almost every second of it.

One of the many things that fascinates me about this industry is how welcomed the question “Why?” is in everyday business. Our clients contract us to find out “why” things are the way they are. As a student of economics, both behavioral and business, I’ve come to appreciate that simple yet so complex three-letter word.

The easiest arena in which to ask that question is, of course, face-to-face. There are times when this method is ideal—focus groups and intercept surveys come to mind first and foremost. However, there are other times when it’s cost-prohibitive to commit resources to such an endeavor. One solution? Telephone interviews with a client’s customers.

But why?

While market researchers adhere rather strictly to a scripted set of interview questions during a telephone survey, we are often compelled by that inquisitive nature to go “off-script” and ask what are called probing questions, the most common and informative of which is “Why?”

But why?

One of the staple questions of a customer survey is “What is Company X’s main strength?” Likewise, one of the staple responses to such a question is “The staff.” If the interviewee is filling out his own paper-and-pencil survey, answering an online survey, or dealing with an inexperienced live researcher, that’s all you’re going to get—a bland, flavorless, stock response that provides no insight whatsoever. The probing question “Why?” will almost always yield an anecdote that tells of a positive customer service or sales experience that data analysts and report writers can use to tell an overarching story about why customers appreciate Company X.

Needless to say, the probing question “Why?” is equally, if not more so, important when it comes to findings areas for improvement. It does little good for our imaginary Company X to learn that its main weakness is, for instance, its lead time (the time it takes from order placement to order shipment). It’s more useful to know why lead time is an issue—perhaps the real issue is a complicated computer system, or a slow supplier, or even staff that doesn’t record orders properly.

“Why?” makes a big difference when devoting resources to address weaknesses. Rather than blindly throwing countless dollars and hours at an issue and hope that something works, “Why?” can help Company X be precise in its improvement efforts, saving time and money. Nowadays, that’s golden.

There are many things “Why?” can do for your business and your bottom line. Above all, “Why?” will help you Know More so you can Do More. If you’d like to know what “Why?” can do for you, call us toll-free at 1-800-999-6615, email us at mail@tweedweber.com and/or visit us on the web at www.tweedweber.com. Also, be sure to follow us on LinkedIn (Tweed-Weber, Inc.) and Twitter (@TweedWeber).

About the author: Michael Thompson has been with Tweed-Weber, Inc. since 2008 and serves as Project Manager. He handles all internal aspects of market research projects, including implementation, database creation, data analysis, and report writing.

Puritan Products: A Unique Blend of Excellence

The following is a recent edition of our e-newsletter: Know More. Do More. Our e-newsletter highlights the uses and benefits of business-to-business research and brings you timely examples of how companies are using research to achieve a competitive advantage. 

Puritan Products, Inc., located in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, specializes in high purity chemicals and custom blended chemical formulations. Compliant in Good Manufacturing Practices (cGMP) and certified to ISO-9001:2008 quality management standards, it serves the global pharmaceutical, biotechnology, microelectronics, and laboratory markets. It’s an exciting time for Puritan Products as the company is currently celebrating 25 years.

Puritan Products’ ability to know what their customers want and to remain competitive in their market is extremely important throughout the entire company. Donna Long, Director of Marketing, explains, “Companies need to know where they stand with their customers. If they don’t, they are not being objective. You always have to ask yourself if you really know how you’re doing. Once you have a baseline for satisfaction, then you know how to make customers happy and how to enhance your capabilities. You can grow your company by utilizing customer data in terms of breadth of products and services, which ultimately impacts revenue.”

A fundamental instrument in Puritan Products’ effort to obtain the voice of the customer is their annual Customer Perception Survey. Puritan Products first contracted with Tweed-Weber in 2009 to help assist them with making a more formalized and repeatable customer feedback effort. Telephone interviews were conducted with customers the first year, followed by an online survey each year after to benchmark results. Erik Nowery, Product Manager, stated, “Surveying customers is an integral part of what we do, and it’s a source of pride throughout our organization. We take it very seriously and talk about the results at every level of the company. It’s one essential way that we measure ourselves. It all starts with our customers and how they feel. You really have nothing without them. They must be a constant priority in order to achieve success.”

Survey questions were developed in the areas of general market information, awareness of services/capabilities, overall perceptions of Puritan Products and its competitors, cGMP, compliance, quality, marketing, relationship management, and future trends and opportunities. These categories helped to obtain well-rounded feedback. According to Donna, “We try to cater to our strategic initiatives and use our customer survey as instructive feedback to measure ourselves, and then to develop new or modified initiatives. The survey has helped with so many growth and improvement efforts we have going on in the company. We’ve also created certain performance measures over the years that allow us to focus those efforts on what’s most important to our customers. We like to know, and need to know, how far we’ve come.”

At Tweed-Weber, we conduct customer surveys for our clients every day, and we see a whole range of satisfaction ratings. Puritan Products is consistently at the top of the heap with their ratings. Every year, customers comment on Puritan Products’ ability to be flexible partners, expedient with orders, and responsive in service in a way that is heads and tails above the competition. Erik explains, “Managing expectations and measuring what the customer is looking for to make their lives easier, instead of what we we’re looking for to make our lives easier, allows us to provide a better service experience. We really value the relationships we have with our customers. If someone has an issue, and we fix it fast, they remember that and trust us to do more.”

In response to their customer survey results, Puritan Products hired a tech service rep to better meet customer needs, and they changed how they measure their internal on-time shipping performance. Donna stated, “We like that we do so well, but we want to focus on areas for improvement. For instance, a direct result of our survey was that we developed an initiative to improve our on-time shipping. We’ve always measured our shipping timeliness as a part of our quality and performance metrics, but we learned that our customers were using different measures to define and rate our shipping performance. The minute we knew that, we put a system in place to match what they were using.”

Some of our clients tell us they are wary of hearing what their customers have to say because they are afraid of receiving bad news. Of course, we believe that’s even more of a reason to gather customer input. If there’s an issue lurking out there, you want to be able to address it and manage it to a positive conclusion. And if your fears are unfounded, it’s a shame to miss the opportunity to hear all the good news about your daily performance. Donna added, “Normally, you don’t get to hear about the really good stuff you’re doing. This survey process lets us hear it, and it feels great. When you hear good things about how you’re impacting customers, you tend to want to do even better.” As a perfect example, one customer of Puritan Products stated, “Puritan’s customer service personnel are the best of any I work with. They are all friendly and knowledgeable, and they follow-through with confirmations and special instructions flawlessly, without exception.”

At Tweed-Weber, we are always impressed by organizations that welcome customer feedback, and we believe Puritan Products is a model company for its enthusiastic and proactive efforts to do so. We enjoy quarterly, strategic discussions that can be referred to as “Greatness and Growlers,” where we talk about what’s working well, and what’s not. Those review meetings are always enlightening and help feed future survey initiatives. Tweed-Weber feels extremely fortunate to include Puritan Products as one of our valued clients, and more important, our friends.

We invite you to learn more about the strategic research services provided by Tweed-Weber, Inc. In a world of uncertainty, the ability to clearly focus your organization creates a distinct competitive advantage. No one can guarantee certainty, but Tweed-Weber can guarantee clarity. You will Know More, so you can Do More. Call us toll-free at 1-800-999-6615, email us at mail@tweedweber.com and/or visit us on the web at www.tweedweber.com. Also, be sure to follow us on LinkedIn (Tweed-Weber, Inc.) and Twitter (@TweedWeber).

Research and Strategic Planning: A Foundation for Strategic Change

The word change means to make different, to alter in condition or appearance. In business organizations today, change is all around us. We see constant technological change, political change, social change, economic change, environmental change, and market change. Some change just happens to us. It is beyond our control. Other change happens because we make it happen.

The word strategy means skillful management in getting the better of an adversary or attaining an end. In business organizations, strategy refers to the planned actions we will take to gain and sustain competitive advantage in the marketplace.

Strategic change, therefore, is the process of purposefully making our organization different in order to gain and sustain competitive advantage in the marketplace. It is to make our organization more productive and more effective than our competitors.

Leading Strategic Change
Our work over the years with various manufacturing, service, health care, and human service organizations has focused on developing and implementing strategies. We begin the strategy development process by gathering feedback from important stakeholder groups to avoid “planning in a bubble.” Those stakeholder groups can include employees, customers, prospects, industry leaders, community leaders, etc.

Strategic change begins with the strategic planning process. As top executives of an organization work through the planning process, they identify one or more strategic actions that must be taken to achieve the mission of the organization and to create differentiation in the marketplace. Whenever strategic actions are implemented, change occurs.

The Planner Perspective vs. The User Perspective
The planner is the person or group of people who conceives, develops and implements the change. Users are all of the people who are affected by the change and, to some degree, are expected to change their behavior. Planners tend to concentrate on the physical or mechanical change. They construct plans to deal with this change from their own perspective. However, physical change is almost always accompanied by behavioral change. We ask people to do things differently, yet we fail to look at this change from the user's point of view. Actions to achieve behavioral change must be specifically integrated with those plans which produce physical change.

The process of managing strategic change, from a planner's perspective, follows a linear path from plan generation through implementation and renewal. Specifically, there are seven phases involved in the process: 1) research/information gathering; 2) action plan development; 3) pre­implementation planning; 4) implementation; 5) de-bugging; 6) refinement; and 7) plan renewal. Each phase addresses issues as seen from the planner's perspective.

As the strategic change goes through these seven phases, the people who are affected go through a series of experiences. While the process from a planner's perspective is very linear, the process from a user's perspective contains a number of different iterations. The series of experiences are first explained in levels of use: non-use; mechanical use; and routine use. As the change process goes through the seven phases and users progress through the three levels of use, they also go through eight stages of user concern. Those stages are: 1) awareness; 2) information seeking; 3) personal concern – (how will this affect me?); 4) mechanical concern (how will this work?); 5) new understanding achieved; 6) concern for consequences; 7) acceptance; and 8) commitment.

Facilitation
An experienced facilitator, one who understands the issues discussed in this blog and has demonstrated expertise in research and strategic planning, will add value to an organization's strategic change activities. If you are trying to identify and implement change throughout your organization, we can help. Call us toll-free at 1-800-999-6615, email us at mail@tweedweber.com and/or visit us on the web at www.tweedweber.com. Also, be sure to follow us on LinkedIn (Tweed-Weber, Inc.) and Twitter (@TweedWeber). 

Tweed-Weber’s stakeholder research, coupled with our strategic planning process, can help you proactively execute change within your organization that will help you gain and sustain a competitive advantage in your marketplace.

Understanding Customer Perception is Key to Increased Opportunities

What do you know? Or more important, what should you know? Hearing and clearly understanding the voice of your customer in today’s competitive environment has become an essential and fundamental requirement to future planning. It is ultimately your customer’s voice that matters the most. Successful organizations hear that voice and effectively use it to guide their activities. You may have heard rumors about what your customers are thinking, or even whispers from them along the way, but it is up to you to clearly understand the thoughts and opinions of your customers in order to compete effectively. Your market, and the business environments of your customers, likely have changed significantly over the past few years. The following are just a few examples of crucial information that can be obtained from your customers to see how you can increase your sales volume today.

 

Your organization’s strengths and weaknesses. Does it really matter what you perceive as your organization’s strengths and weaknesses if your customers view them as something entirely different?

 

Competitive information. Recognizing your customers’ opinions about your organization is paramount. Knowing what your customers think about your competition is even better.

 

Unmet customer needs. Your customers are connected to your industry from different angles.

 

Future trends. The state of the economy over the past number of years has been unprecedented. You may have found your industry changing at a pace so fast that it is almost impossible to keep up.

 

Take a moment to consider the importance of customer perceptions on your business and the impact their reality has on your organization. Think also of your organization’s current actions with regard to customer perceptions:

• Can any of the performance issues you face today result from inaccurate awareness of customer perceptions?
• Are your organization’s improvement efforts targeted at addressing critical performance issues as prescribed by your customers?

Many well-run and well-intentioned organizations fall short in these areas. As a result, many improvement efforts target issues that have a relatively low impact on improving customer satisfaction and, therefore, competitive advantage. Management-generated improvement ideas prove effective, but often, and especially in the ongoing stages of organizational improvement, general feelings and intuitions are inadequate triggers for positively affecting customer satisfaction.

  

Many organizations have learned the importance of consistently measuring customer perceptions and satisfaction through a formal customer survey program. A formal process allows customers to share their views about an organization’s performance in a way that is timely and objective, and in today’s market, it is a requirement to staying ahead. Many organizations have expressed a desire to go it alone, but eventually find it challenging to do it in the most effective manner. We have found organizations often ask: 

• Where do I start?
• What method(s) should I use?
• Who should I survey?
• How often should surveys be conducted?
• Who here should implement the surveys?
• How should results be communicated to management?

Our response is simple: we’ll handle it. With nearly three decades of combined experience in market research, our professionals have seen it all and can guide the development and implementation a customer perception survey that will provide an organization with numerous opportunities such as:

• Significant improvement in an organization’s ability to target improvement efforts that will have a real impact on their overall success.
• Improved insight for management and employees into the effects of their actions on customer satisfaction.
• Opportunities to strengthen relationships with key customers.
• Increased business opportunities.

Overall, customer perception surveys can help organizations make strategic decisions, and they provide organizations with a clear understanding of the market’s awareness and perceptions of their products/services. A customer perception survey helps an organization keep its finger on the pulse of a rapidly changing marketplace. 

 

If you’re wondering if a formal customer research program is right for you, we can help. Call us toll-free at 1-800-999-6615, email us at mail@tweedweber.com and/or visit us on the web at

www.tweedweber.com. Also, be sure to follow us on LinkedIn (Tweed-Weber, Inc.) and Twitter (@TweedWeber). The result will be the knowledge you need to make the right decisions to guide your organization into the future. In a world of uncertainty, the ability to clearly focus your organization creates a distinct competitive advantage. No one can guarantee certainty, but market research can guarantee clarity. You will Know More, so you can Do More. 

Creating Long-Term Sales Growth

Whether you make widgets or sell a service, sales growth is always a major issue affecting your company's long-term success. But if you are like many other organizations, how you go about creating long-term sales growth is a daunting challenge. Sell harder? Advertise more? Modify your product or service? What's the most effective path to take, AND how can you do it without spending an inordinate amount of money?

In order to understand how to go about creating long-term sales growth, it's best to get back to fundamentals. The first fundamental understanding involves general market dynamics. If you want your market to buy more from you than your competitors, you need to give them a reason to do so. Is your price consistently lower? Do your products/services better meet their needs? Do you provide better service during and after the sale? Do you understand their business better, or have you established better relationships with their people?

The market is very difficult to predict in many areas. But one area that is predictable is that the market will, by itself, vote for the company that is perceived as meeting their needs the best. And the market votes for the winner with dollars. 

The second fundamental understanding is more specific to your market(s) and your company. What is the nature of your market, its current and evolving needs, and what is your company's perceived ability to meet those needs relative to your competition?

The reason to gain this fundamental understanding is undeniable. As is common with most of us, our perception of the forces and trends affecting our markets and our companies is based on a combination of issues. It is based on our interpretation of various events and situations over time, as well as our many experiences in dealing with those events. Sometimes our interpretations closely match our market's interpretations, but many times they are off base, either by a little or by a lot. If you believe your perception of the market is closely aligned with the market's perception of you without testing that assumption, then you may be in trouble.

Setting sales growth strategies based primarily on subjective perceptions will probably result in something less than what you desire. Furthermore, if you want to get your people behind a strategy, you need to support it with something better than just your good thinking and intuitive prowess.

Obtaining that information is critical. It will serve as the fundamental basis for a strategy to create long-term sales growth. But how do you go about getting that information and what do you do after you've gotten it? That's where research strategic planning comes in and the use of an outside, integrated consulting firm proves its value in helping out.

Research/Information Gathering

Determining market dynamics and your company's competitive advantage is a result of learning your customers' perceptions of their industries, their current and evolving needs, and their interest in companies that are vying to fill those needs (including yours). Normally, this is accomplished through intensive surveying using a number of proven methods. This is best done by an expert, third-party consulting firm. By combining this information with internally generated data, (e.g., sales history, financial performance, etc.) the dynamics of the market and your position within it can be viewed and discussed objectively by your management team. As a result, a consensus can be achieved as to the starting point for determining the sales growth strategy that is right for your company.

Long-Term Sales Growth Strategy Development

Determining the correct sales strategy for your company is the result of combining the work done previously with the fundamental understanding of general market dynamics mentioned earlier. The market embraces the company that meets their needs better than the others. Determining your company's long-term sales strategy will involve defining what those needs are and what you can do to stand-out in meeting those needs in the marketplace.

Think about the affect the activities described previously would have on your company's ability to create long-term sales growth. Your people would see the logic that was involved and be more enthusiastic in supporting and contributing to the company's new and/or revitalized direction.

If you are trying to establish long-term sales growth, we can help. Call us toll-free at 1-800-999-6615, email us at mail@tweedweber.com and/or visit us on the web at www.tweedweber.com. Also, be sure to follow us on LinkedIn (Tweed-Weber, Inc.) and Twitter (@TweedWeber). Tweed-Weber can help you include your market(s) and their perceptions as a foundation for your continued success.

Are you listening to the voice of your customers?

Hearing and clearly understanding the voice of your customers in today’s competitive environment is a best practice and has become an essential and fundamental requirement to future planning. It is ultimately your customers' voice that matters most. Successful organizations hear that voice and effectively use it to guide their activities. You may have heard rumors about what your customers are thinking, or even whispers from them along the way, but it is up to you to clearly understand the thoughts and opinions of your customers in order to compete effectively.

The following are just a few examples of essential information that should be obtained from your customer base.

Your organization’s strengths and weaknesses

Does it really matter what you perceive as your organization’s strengths and weaknesses if your customers view them as something entirely different?

Competitive information

Recognizing your customers’ opinions about your organization is paramount. Knowing what your customers think about your competition is even better. How beneficial would it be to identify opportunities that will help your organization stand out among the rest?

Unmet customer needs

Your customers are connected to your industry in different ways. How valuable would it be to hear about the needs of your customers from different perspectives to which your organization may be able to respond?

Marketing preferences

Knowing what attracts the most attention within your market and among your customers can make all the difference when allocating marketing resources. How helpful would it be for you to know which trade shows are most valuable, which trade publications get read most often, or what kinds of marketing activities your customers prefer the most?

Future trends and opportunities

Your industry may be changing at a pace that is measurable, or it may be changing so fast that it is almost impossible to keep up. How important is it to understand what your customers are doing differently in order to respond to industry changes? And how will you know if there are increased business opportunities unless you find out what future plans your customers are making?

Incorporating customer perception surveys into the normal, annual routine of your organization will ensure that the distinct voice of your customers is being heard loud and clear when making strategic business decisions. For manufacturing companies that are ISO/QS certified, it is a requirement to proactively obtain customer input and use that feedback to drive important growth and improvement efforts.

If you are wondering how to best gather customer feedback, we can help. We manage every aspect of the survey process from beginning to end, so you don’t have to. Call us toll-free at 1-800-999-6615, email us at mail@tweedweber.com and/or visit us on the web at www.tweedweber.com. Also, be sure to follow us on LinkedIn (Tweed-Weber, Inc.) and Twitter (@TweedWeber). Tweed-Weber can help you design and implement a customer perception survey that will bring the voice of your customers directly to your planning table.

Problem Solving and Continuous Improvement

The most important tools you will use to improve the total quality of your organization are the problem solving and continuous improvement process that your organization has adopted. Notice that there is a clear distinction between problem solving and continuous improvement. Each process has a specific definition and a specific application, and it is imperative that you use the right process in the right situations.

Problem Solving Defined
Webster's defines a problem as “a question, matter, situation, or person that is perplexing or difficult.” That definition is fine for grammatical purposes, but it doesn’t help us much with problem solving in an organizational environment. A more functional definition of a business-related problem is “a deviation from the normal or expected for which the cause is unknown and for which one would like to determine the cause and find a solution.” Let’s look at an example to clarify our definition. Suppose, at the end of work today, you get in your car, you put the key in the ignition and turn it. The normal or expected result would be that the engine would start and you would be able to drive home. Today, when you turn the key, nothing happens. That’s a problem. A deviation from the normal or the expected. Do you want to find the cause and determine a solution? Of course. Something happened to cause the problem. Some kind of change took place. By finding what changed, you will find the cause of the problem. The cause of a problem is always found in some kind of change. Find the change, and you have found the cause. Put the situation back to the way it was, and you have solved the problem.

Continuous Improvement Defined
Continuous improvement is defined as “the ongoing process of making small changes in order to improve output or performance.” Continuous improvement is the opposite of problem solving. You are purposefully trying to change the normal or the expected in a positive direction. You are trying to make a change in the system that will cause a change in the outcome. Let’s use the automobile example again. Let’s say you are averaging 19 miles per gallon of gasoline, and you want to increase the fuel efficiency of your car. You begin to look for ways to improve your mileage. Each time you come up with an idea, you make a change in the process of how you maintain or drive your car. This change causes improvement. A series of small changes can result in a big improvement and give you increased fuel efficiency.

There are many different models for problem solving and continuous improvement, but the following are examples of the seven-step processes that your organization can choose to adopt, which are highly effective.

The Seven-Step Problem Solving Process

1. State the problem. What is the deviation from the standard?
2. Specify the problem. Describe what the problem IS and IS NOT. The more specific you make your problem description, the closer you will be to finding the cause.
3. Find the differences between the IS and the IS NOT.
4. Brainstorm possible causes. What are some changes that could have caused this problem?
5. Test the most likely cause. Which of these possible causes is most likely to be the cause of this problem?
6. Validate the cause. What can we do to prove that the most likely cause is the real cause of the problem?
7. Develop the solution. What action(s) can we take to undo the change that caused this problem?

The Seven-Step Continuous Improvement Process

1. Select the condition to improve.
2. Define how to measure the condition. Before you can improve a condition, you must be able to measure it.
3. Set a target.
4. Gather facts to define the condition as it is now.
5. Generate improvement ideas.
6. Select, test, and adopt improvement ideas.
7. Establish, document, and discipline new procedures.

Problem solving and continuous improvement are very similar. In both cases, you are trying to understand how change affects results. In problem solving, you are trying to find the change that caused a negative deviation from the standard. In continuous improvement, you are trying to cause a positive deviation from the normal by introducing change. In either case, it is essential that these processes become standardized or “institutionalized.” When these processes are institutionalized,

• everyone on your team is taking the same approach to solving problems and improving processes;
• everyone is speaking the same language;
• anyone from your organization (even if they are not members of your team) can study the solutions or improvement steps you are planning and understand how you arrived at them; and,
• people feel empowered because they are using a method that has been sanctioned by the organization.

Most importantly, you will give your business a competitive advantage when the people in your organization genuinely recognize that problem solving and continuous improvement are simultaneously opportunities and obligations. The opportunity is the empowerment that comes from having a tool, recognized throughout your organization, for solving a problem or improving a process. The obligation is the requirement that the tools be used to improve the total quality of your organization.

If problem solving and continuous improvement could benefit your business, our research and strategic planning professionals can help you. Call us toll-free at 1-800-999-6615, email us at mail@tweedweber.com, and/or visit us on the web at www.tweedweber.com. Also, be sure to follow us on LinkedIn (Tweed-Weber, Inc.) and Twitter (@TweedWeber). We’re ready to work for you in a way that will enhance the way your business operates today and in the future.

How do you give yourself an advantage in the marketplace?

Market differentiation. Have you ever wondered how to create that? There are five commonly recognized sources of market advantage. It is not necessary to use all of them in order to distinguish your company in its markets. Any one is enough. However, by achieving differentiation in one source and superiority in another, you further ensure your business's continued success.

No one source is, in and of itself, better than another. Let's explore each of the five sources and their relationship to your company.

Low Price
A company can gain and sustain market advantage in its markets by focusing on and achieving a low price strategy. In order to do this, however, there conditions must be present:

• The company must be a low cost provider. The reason is simple: any company that tries to be low price without being low cost for any extended period will eventually become unprofitable and run out of cash.
• The company must always be low price. This is essential because the market must come to rely on the low price the organization charges for its services. If the organization is only low price with particular programs, when it needs to generate sales, or when it is trying to capture market share, the marketplace will be confused and will not respond.
• The company must position itself in the market as the low price provider. It must consistently and repeatedly tell the market through its promotional mix that its prices are the lowest it will ever find.

Product Differentiation
A company can gain and sustain market advantage by clearly differentiating its products and services from those provided by its competitors. There are several ways in which a company can differentiate its products:

• Innovation/Unique Characteristic: by providing products and services that are highly innovative or possess characteristics unique to a market.
• High Perceived Quality: by providing products and services with high perceived quality.
• Availability/Response Time: by having its products and services readily available to its customers, thereby demonstrating a significantly shorter response time than its competitors.
• Promotion: by promoting its products and services in a way that the market perceives them as being noticeably different than other comparable products. 

Unrivaled Service
A company can gain and sustain market advantage by differentiating, from its competition, the way it sells its products and the support services it provides. Some specific examples of service differentiation include:

• being highly and consistently responsive to customers and their wants and needs.
• delivering products with an unexpectedly high degree of reliability.
• treating the customer with respect...all of the time.

Niching
A company can gain and sustain market advantage by focusing on a very narrow market and becoming recognized as the provider within that market. This focus can take place on a "macro" basis or on a "micro" basis. When a company decides to pursue a niche market on a macro basis, it focuses its organizational resources on:

• a specific geographical area
• a particular customer type
• a highly defined line of products or services

When a company decides to purse a niche market on a macro basis, it focuses its resources on selling its services to specifically targeted prospects and/or increasing its penetration within deliberately chosen key customer accounts.

Relationships Leading to "Partnering"
There is a general rule in business that says, "All things being equal, people would rather buy from a friend." There comes a point, though, when that is no longer true--when other performance factors (e.g. quality, service, price) are not adequate to justify continuing to give business to the friend.

With this rule in mind, you can gain and sustain market advantage by building superior relationships with your customers (and prospects). These relationships can exist on two different levels. At the first level, you have worked hard to identify and meet the needs of your customers. This trust and familiarity has enabled your customers to view you as a "friend," a friend with whom they have a great relationship.

At the second level, you have been able to leverage your relationship into a true partnership--not in a legal sense, but rather one in which the customers view you as being essential to their lives. When a partnership level has been achieved, you are capable of not only meeting your customers' needs, but anticipating them to a point where you are able to create mutually beneficial business opportunities. When this level of partnering occurs, your competitors are at a significant disadvantage because they experience a "barrier to entry" that is all but impenetrable.

Tweed-Weber's research makes it easy to get the information you need to give yourself a clear advantage in the marketplace. You can call us toll-free at 1-800-999-6615, email us at mail@tweedweber.com, and/or visit us on the web at www.tweedweber.com. Also, be sure to follow us on LinkedIn (Tweed-Weber, Inc.) and on Twitter (@TweedWeber). Whether your research project is large or small, you can be assured that Tweed-Weber has the resources, skills, and experience to provide the information and results you need.