A good measurement system is an opportunity to focus on and meet your customers’ needs. Well designed measurement programs have a lot of benefits:
- It forces you to think about the critical success factors and the main elements in achieving these factors.
- It provides you with reliable information on what’s right and wrong with the organization.
- It provides an agreed-upon framework in which people can discuss the organization’s procedures and problems.
- It accurately tells you what you do well, so that you can promote yourself honestly in the marketplace.
- It gives your employees pride by achieving and exceeding their goals on the measures.
True customer-driven research is designed to engage the entire organization. It has the inherent power to change the way the organization thinks, and then improves the organization again and again in a refinement driven by customers’ needs.
A customer-focused measurement system starts with listening to and getting feedback from the customer. The following information can be obtained by using focus groups or customer surveys:
- Which product and service characteristics are important to your customers?
- What is the relative importance of each characteristic?
- What level of performance on each product and service characteristic will meet your customers’ expectations?
The answers to these questions will tell you what matters to your customers. Once you know the answers, you will be able to create a system that tracks how well you’re satisfying them every day.