The Critical to Customer Mindset Tool: Where Are We Causing You Pain?

Summary: In the structure and flow of this book, various tools have already dealt with some big issues that naturally impact channel partners. Product/service performance and Price/Cost are among two of the biggest areas that have already been addressed. So, we ask ourselves what additional actions can we take to become a better channel partner. These relationships are extremely important. At this point we refer back to the material on process improvement techniques and now suggest turning these toward customer facing process issues. The Pareto Chart (the 80%/20% rule) is discussed in terms of setting a method to measure and gather data, target setting, problem solving against that target, and monitoring improvement progress. This provides guidance and suggestions to focus process improvement tools toward the customer facing part of the organization. Suggestions and approaches are discussed. In cases where the company does not have a metric for the item at issue, a simple quality tool is introduced to provide timely definition of the issue.