ASPECTS OF TOTAL QUALITY MANAGEMENT APPLIED IN ...

Annals of the University “Constantin Brâncuşi”of Tg-Jiu, No. 1/2008, Volume 2,
ISSN: 1842-4856
Personalizing the Client Serving Strategy
The importance of human contacts in serving the customers
The serving/supplying activity involves a certain direct contact with the people and no matter
how good the strategy is, the customers’ perception related to the offered services leads to either its
succeeding or its failing. An important condition for strategy’s efficiency is that all the employees
involved in applying that strategy have to know it, to relate to it ea and to fully understand it.
The companies who succeed in providing high quality services base their own activity on the
belief that their relations with their employees are directly reflected within the relations with their
clients and customers. Such company’s leading boards apply a certain marketing (strategy) oriented
towards within the company, offering their employees the necessary support for accordingly
developing their activity and rewarding the good results obtained in providing the service had in view.
Implementing the serving strategy:
The serving strategy should mainly offer regularity of the service and it includes four
components: the system itself, the control over the system, the control over the cost and over the
quality of the services. Personalizing the strategy for serving the client would mean to find that
converging point that might join all the employees, namely the fact that the clients pays for the service
received.
That converging point would be the answer to the question: “What are we offering to our
client?” – the answer to this question should preoccupy all the company’s employees
The strategy for serving the clients should have a certain starting point, which would define the
value that the company had in view might offer to its clients. Transforming the strategy according to
what the company can offer to its clients would result in personalizing the company’s serving strategy.
Such personalizing would constitute an important motivating force for all the personnel. By
personalizing the strategy, employees’ cooperation is obtained for enforcing the said strategy. The
employees have to start with analyzing the results not the activities. The employees should be informed
regarding to what they have to do in order accomplish the best results, the leadership’s role being to
explain in details what the strategy for serving the clients would mean.
A good example in this respect could be that of Scandinavia Airlines System – SAS Company,
in the beginning of the '80s. Hit by the oil crisis and the amplifying of the competition, the abovementioned
company had losses amounting to 30 million in the years 1979 and 1980. Following that
crisis, the new president of the company tried to turn toward the market and to turn the company firma
into the best air company for the segment of business people often traveling by plane. The president
realized that, in order to obtain such results, the key elements he ought to have in view would be the
services, offered by both the company and its staff, who offered the said services. Thus he moved the
stress from the airplanes to the people and the service rendered by them for the clients. The aimed
segment, namely the business people were asked about to their expectations regarding the services
offered by the company and then their requirements were enforced. Among their most important
requirements where: punctuality, the proper maneuvering of luggage, the suitable serving, while those
which got little attention were the low costs and the late hour technology. Thus the company defined as
its new strategy the impulsion and motivation of the employees, encouraging the low levels personnel
to take responsibilities and to also have initiative. Following those actions the company became again
profitable.
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