Customer Orientation
Total Quality requires a shift from inward looking organization to an outward looking organization. In customer oriented organizations the goal of constant focus is to be ahead of customer's needs and competitors.
Customer Satisfaction:
Customer defines the quality. This unambiguous concept has profound implications for organizations that take it seriously.'You have to start with the customer and key your actions off them. See the customer as the starting point,listening post and ultimate arbiter for everything'.First they determine the customer's needs and expectations - the attributes that are desired. then they develop the product or services to suit their continuing changing needs.
Focus on customers - Outward looking:
It prescribes an approach to quality improvement that begins by looking at the needs of the external customer and then working backwards through customer-supplier links. Instead of asking 'what is that we can make' a total quality organization asks 'what is it that customer desires that we should attempt to make'. This applies to every individual,section or department in the organization.
Internal customer orientation:
TQM focuses on the internal customer as well as external. you can not meet the needs of external customers unless your internal processes are in alignment. The idea that everyone has a customer provides a framework for improvement. Regardless of one's job everyone in the organization is a link in a chain of internal customers and suppliers that eventually leads to ones company's external customer.