Customer satisfaction may seem like little more than a public relations buzzword but, at Philips Hong Kong, one manager said that focusing on it gave his division the edge in this year's competition.
Winning a certificate of merit was clear and objective confirmation that 'the main lines are OK and the boat's sailing straight', said Gerard Van Riet, general manager of quality, safety, environment and organisation at Philips Portable Audio, based in Kwai Chung.
'Peer and managerial auditing have always played a role here as well as inviting colleagues from other divisions and countries,' Mr Van Riet said. 'But all of them are from Philips corporate culture, too. We looked at the HKMA award as having clear benefits - the most important for us was a lot of free consulting from outside sources.' Entrants in the competition undergo a rigorous, five-month process of reviews, questions, site visits and written reports by a panel of industry peers.
Manufacturer of portable radios, CD-players, clock radios and boom boxes under the Philips and Magnavox labels, the Hong Kong business unit controls design, production, marketing and distribution of all portable audio for the Netherlands electronics giant.
Mr Van Riet, who originally trained as an electrical/mechanical engineer, said the company's own TQM model, Philips Quality Standards, was the basis and inspiration for his unit's formula for success.
'A lot of companies talk about customer satisfaction, but what does it mean for your product?' he asked. 'It's a rather conceptual term and translating it to issues that are clear is difficult.' A Philips four-item checklist is the method Mr Van Riet and his managers use to realise it: 'zero-hour quality' or the percentage of sets with defects; the field call rate which counts the number of repairs requested; delivery reliability; and, perhaps the most important, 'time to market.' The latter refers to the 'windows' of only a few weeks in which Philips and its competitors have to get new products on retailers' shelves during restocking. If the latest innovation is not delivered by then, the space sits empty or, worse, occupied by rival goods.