Customer Focus - Service Focus and IT Focus

Question: Discuss about the Customer Focus, Service Focus and IT Focus. Answer: Introduction For a business to prosper, customer focus, service focus, and IT focus must be put into consideration. Customer focus is the direction in which you do your things to impress the customer. The customer is always right and therefore organizations should put into consideration complains made by the customers. When delivering services you should ensure that you work as per the customers standard so that the customer can be happy with your service. For this service to be implemented smoothly there should be the use of modern technology like online communication, 24 hours service for the customers and also receiving money through modern payment like visa cards and mobile money payment (Bhatt, 2010). Customer and service focus There are 2 different types of customers this is the internal customers and the external customers. Internal customers are persons who purchase the firms products yet they are the composition of the staff while external customers are institutions, companies or individuals who purchase the companys products yet they do not hold any shares of the company (Wilson, et al, 2012). For the company to prosper, they must consider their customers as the first priority. They should understand what best suit their customers and they should understand the amount of product which will best suit their customers. When less product is produced, there will be insufficient stock for the customers meaning they will shift for the alternative while when more are produced, there will be bulk resulting in wasting. The quality of goods also matters. Producing goods of high quality will ensure there is a good customer satisfaction hence greeting a good rapport with your customers. In your business, you should ensure that the customers are satisfied (Gronroos, 2011). Customer satisfaction is more of the feeling or attitude. It is not an objective statistics. When you deliver a quality good to the customer or the service you have offered is sufficient and the customer is happy about it, then the customer will pay promptly. When the payment is sufficient, the cash flow will improve in the organization and these customers will increase in number, the customers will occasionally check in and they will purchase more. When working on customer satisfaction, you should consider both the internal and the external customers. The service you offer to your customers should be more lucrative than your competitors. When you want to determine whether your customers are happy with the quality of goods and services you offer to them, you should not just look on the product alone, you should also determine the quality by the level of services connected with the product these services include; Packaging- packaging will enable your product to attract more customers Timely and accurate delivery/shipping- when the product is being taken to the customer, you should ensure it is received as at the agreed time. This built trust and confident hence the customer will always prefer your service (Tallon, 2008). The quality of the company is determined by the customers to define in terms of overall experience with the company so nothing should be neglected. In case the company offers goods and services that do not satisfy the need of the customer, the customer will defect. When a customer defects it means the customer has stopped hiring the service of the company or the customer no longer purchase the goods from the company. Losing a customer is a big downfall of the company while retaining the customer is a big benefit of the company. When you lose a potential customer, it will mean that your competitor has gained. Therefore, when the customer back out it is a threat to the organization these can happen when there is the poor quality of product or poor after sale service. On the other hand maintaining a customer is an advantage to the organization (Chaffey White, 2010). In the service sector, employee- customer satisfaction determines whether the customer will defect or the customer will stay. These services include nursing, airplane attendant among others. A Proper relationship with the customer means that the customer will stay whereas poor coordination means that the customer will defect and this will cause the company in their profit. These services are crucial since they involve face-face interaction. The main reason for the customer focus is to gain productivity in the public sector and to achieve profit in the private sector. Something which is confirmed is the relationship between customer and retention and profit (Gulati Oldroyd, 2005). When there is a good human resource management then there is good employee retention. Employee retention can also be beefed by organizing development methods such as team empowerment, building, and job development. When an employee is satisfied with the job condition he will not aim to walk away but when the conditions are poor, the employee will walk away. Employee satisfaction also relates to external services and customer satisfaction. Customers satisfaction are being driven by two basic ways this is the development key indicators or collect data regarding the perception of quality received by the customers. The key indicators for physical products may include; aesthetics, adaptability reliability, usability and functionality while major indicators for service are: communication skills, willingness to listen to customers, appearance of the physical facilities, responsiveness to requests, billing process, the safety of the service and courteousness of the employee (Lagrosen, 2001). To meet the level of services your business needs, customer focused quality management should be an essential part of your IT. IT is linked with giving out an ever-increasing line of product and services to the business. The quality of product and services must be maintained many best practices should aim at advancing the quality of these services and products offered by the IT. They are important quality management system. Some of the best quality management systems that every best practice should follow is; (Tallon, 2008). The first principal of quality management is to be customer focus. IT is used by many customers both the external and the internal customers and this customer use different products and they have different needs so for the needs to be achieved and the customer to be satisfied, the IT must be developed to meet the needs of every one failure to do this, customers will defect and employees will leave since their interests will not be catered for. There are four areas that should be understood while developing IT for the organization. The customer current needs, future needs should meet its requirement and should strive to surpass the quality this customer needs (Bhatt, 2010). The first area you should identify all of your products and services. This can be done by creating a catalog. In IT this catalogs should be simplified to cater for every sector. The second step is to identify all the customers who use your products and services either internal or external. Some services are used by everyone so through IT you can include them in the network infrastructure The third step is to determine the customer requirement. This is a key product of quality management and customer focus. It can be achieved through IT and the best way to achieve it is by asking customers questions and applying to their questions as per their needs. Finally, after understanding the need of your customers, you have identified your products then the final step is on the delivery of this products. To give customers what they want, you need to meet the customers expectations or you perform more than what the customer is expecting. An IT department should do not less than meet the expectation of every customer. They should strive to exceed the expectation of each customer. The IT should also be flexible and should update product and services provided by the change in the need (Lagrosen, 2001). For a good IT in the organization, it has to have: Strategic vision: a good IT in a business must have strategic goals. These strategic goals should be long term, near term, and short term. Success criteria must be clearly defined and routinely reviewed. Vision translation: the strategic vision should be presented to the IT staffs and they should work hand in hand with other departments to achieve that. Strategic frame work: This should enlighten how the IT is prepared to tackle the strategies planned by the organization (Chaffey White, 2010). Conclusion Customer focus, service focus, and IT focus is an essential measure for any business to perform. For your business to be of the top class, you must ensure that your customers are happy and satisfied. When your customers are happy, they refer doing business with you and they can also refer other people to you. When this is done, you will increase the cash hence increased profit, on the other hand, IT is a basic concept in todays organizations. Organizations should employ modern technologies to ensure they a bid by customers need and also they compete favorably with their competitors (Jones, 2010). Reference list Bhatt, G. D., Emdad, A. F. (2010). An empirical examination of the relationship between information technology (IT) infrastructure, customer focus, and business advantages. Journal of Systems and Information Technology, 12(1), 4-16. Chaffey, D., White, G. (2010). Business information management: improving performance using information systems. Pearson Education. Grnroos, C. (2011). A service perspective on business relationships: The value creation, interaction, and marketing interface. Industrial marketing management, 40(2), 240-247. Gulati, R., Oldroyd, J. B. (2005). The quest for customer focus. Harvard Business Review, 83(4), 92-101. Jones, G. R. (2010). Organizational theory, design, and change. Upper Saddle River: Pearson. Kohli, R., Grover, V. (2008). Business value of IT: An essay on expanding research directions to keep up with the times. Journal of the association for information systems, 9(1), 23. Lagrosen, S. (2001). Strengthening the weakest link of TQM-from customer focus to customer understanding. The TQM Magazine, 13(5), 348-354. Tallon, P. P. (2008). Inside the adaptive enterprise: an information technology capabilities perspective on business process agility. Information Technology and Management, 9(1), 21-36. Wilson, A., Zeithaml, V. A., Bitner, M. J., Gremler, D. D. (2012). Services marketing: Integrating customer focus across the firm. McGraw-Hill.