Linking employee behaviour to external customer satisfaction using quality function deployment

Abstract This paper considers the relationship between human behavioural patterns occurring in industrial environments to the general level of external customer satisfaction, the hypothesis being that by correlating behaviour patterns to levels of customer satisfaction a route can be found to improve performance by changing behaviours. A modification of the quality function deployment (QFD) technique is used to relate attributes that external customers value to internal behavioural patterns. Situation strength is seen as the key influencing factor on individual and group behaviour, the argument being that, if the situation is strong, then changes to situational variables would have the primary impact upon the behaviour. In contrast, if the situation is weak, then recruitment and a rewards system are better influencers of behaviour. A case study based around a small engineering enterprise demonstrates how the use of QFD can guide managers on the introduction of the most appropriate initiatives to improve performance.