Tag Archives: Customer focus

Customer Focus and Internet Travel Search

The internet should make finding airline flight information easy. Instead it is a huge pain. Hipmunk has taken on the challenge of doing this well, and I think they have done a great job. This video provides an excellent view … Continue reading

Posted in Creativity, Customer focus, Innovation, IT, Management, Process improvement | Tagged , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

Delighting Customers

If you have customers that see you as adequate you will keep customers based on inertia. But you have several big problems awaiting you. Those trying to win your customers business only have to overcome inertia – which can be … Continue reading

Posted in Competition, Customer focus, Deming, Management, Process improvement, quote | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 5 Comments

Trust Your Staff to Make Decisions

The failure to give your organization the flexibility to serve customers is a big mistake. Many companies make this mistake. Often the basic problem is managers don’t trust that their systems to hire and develop people that will make good … Continue reading

Posted in Customer focus, Management, Respect, Software Development | Tagged , , , , | 8 Comments

Problems With Student Evaluations as Measures of Teacher Performance

Dr. Deming was, among other things a professor. He found the evaluation of professors by students an unimportant (and often counterproductive measure) – used in some places for awards and performance appraisal. He said for such a measure to be … Continue reading

Posted in Deming, Education, Performance Appraisal, Psychology, Science | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Southwest Not Delta or United

One of the posts highlighted in the last post was one example of how Southwest behaves. It wasn’t a one time thing. It was a common result of the system Southwest has in place where they treat customers like human … Continue reading

Posted in Customer focus, Management, Systems thinking | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

Aligning Marketing Vision and Management

Why do so many companies market one thing and provide something else? I know it might be easier to sell something different than what you offer your customer today. But if you decide to market one vision, why don’t you … Continue reading

Posted in Customer focus, Management, Popular, quote, Respect, Systems thinking | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 6 Comments

Worse Hotel Service the More You Pay

The more you pay for your hotel room the more likely they will charge to provide decent WiFi in your room. Whether a company tries to rip you off with exorbitant prices, or lousy service, is just a function of … Continue reading

Posted in Customer focus, Deming, Lean thinking, Management | Tagged , , , | 4 Comments

Lean Inventories Do Not Excuse Failing to Deliver

Low inventory levels do not mean failing to have products available for customers. Now, if you manufacturing in huge batches and can’t respond to customer feedback then it might mean failure to predict customer demand does mean failure to deliver. … Continue reading

Posted in Customer focus, Lean thinking, Management, Manufacturing, Process improvement, Systems thinking | Tagged , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Credit Card Company Tries Providing Value

Most credit card issues seem to use business models based on tricking customers into paying high fees. PartnersFirst is focusing on providing value to customers. A Different Kind of Credit-Card Company PartnersFirst is a different kind of credit-card company. Started … Continue reading

Posted in Customer focus | Tagged , | Comments Off on Credit Card Company Tries Providing Value

YouTube Uses Multivariate Experiment To Improve Sign-ups 15%

Google does a great job of using statistical and engineering principles to improve. It is amazing how slow we are to adopt new ideas but because we are it provides big advantages to companies like Google that use concepts like … Continue reading

Posted in Customer focus, Data, Design of Experiments, Google, IT, Management, Process improvement, Quality tools, quote, Science, Software Development, Statistics | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments