Creating a Customer-Centered Culture: Leadership in Quality, Innovation, and Speed

Author: Robin L. Lawton
Copyright: 1993
Publisher: ASQ Quality Press
# of Pages: 17
Price: $47.25
ISBN-10: 0-873891-51-1
ISBN-13: 978-0873891516
Date of Review: February, 2008

Robin Lawton's book, Creating a Customer-Centered Culture: Leadership in Quality, Innovation, and Speed, is a recommended read for any state government employee and should be a definite read for a manager or supervisor. Lawton reintroduces the concept of customer service and customer satisfaction into the government setting in a fresh and meaningful way. His holistic approach to improving customer satisfaction is clear and easy to understand.

Creating a Customer-Centered Culture: Leadership in Quality, Innovation, and Speed, Lawton introduces a broad framework for measuring and improving internal and external customer satisfaction. He demonstrates that every organization, including those in service and knowledge industries, creates products that can be counted, measured and improved. The approaches presented in the book can be applied directly to state government's need to adapt to rapidly changing customer expectations.

This book is particularly helpful in a government environment because it helps employees to effectively frame the work they do in terms of measurable products. Once employees can do that, they begin to view their work in terms of customers who use those products. The ability to identify "customers" makes it possible to apply the principles and concepts that lead to customer satisfaction.

When compared with the private sector, identifying customers has always been more complex in a government environment. So it is no surprise that government has been largely unsuccessful in exercises that seek to identify customers. Robin Lawton clarifies the confusion by showing that each organization has different types of customers and not all of them are of equal value to the organization. Some customers even have conflicting needs. Some customers are end-users, that is, they use the product directly. Other customers serve as brokers for the products; they encourage others to use those products. Still other customers are "fixers." They repackage the products or repair the products for the benefit of the end-user.

This book will help you to:

• Express your work in terms of tangible products
• Develop measures for intangible work
• Clarify who your customers are
• Determine customer' needs and expectations

Government employees find themselves working in an environment that must meet the challenges of rapid change and growing competition. Learning who our customers are and what they expect form us is no longer optional. Government must become more attentive to the issue of customer satisfaction!

Robin Lawton has written a great book that offers a proven model and practical approaches managing change based on customer-driven expectations. His book offers an approach that can be used successfully in the public sector. Creating a Customer-Centered Culture: Leadership in Quality, Innovation, and Speed can help government employees become engaged in efforts to provide results that our customers value.

Review by : Terry Hall