The pitfall of the priority given to customer satisfaction by EHSQ management

In all good EHSQ management schools, we are taught that customer satisfaction is the primary goal of a EHSQ system. And in our business, our sales department tells us that we have to do new things just like the competitor when competing for a prospect, in order to win the deal.

And when we listen to our customers, for example during surveys, they often ask us for things they have seen in other companies or our competitors.

Therefore, EHSQ department has the pressure to analyze why we are failing in this aspect of our business, why we cannot give the same satisfaction as our competitor, where is the problem? in our production department? In our support service? In our implementation phase?

And if the EHSQ department yields to pressure, it falls into the trap of imitation and homogeneity.

Think outside the box

The sound reaction should be to step back and decide to do differently, to innovate compared to our competitors ...

Innovation is not necessarily related to technology, it can be marketing. There is no need to invent to innovate, and what is new in one sector may have been known for a long time in another sector.

Questions that EHSQ management should ask when collecting indicators as they feel the pressure of the other departments of the company and the market are:

• What has never been offered in our sector?

• What has never been increased beyond the standard in our sector?

• What needs to be reduced below standards?

The EHSQ Department also need to ask themselves some questions in order to understand their non-customers:

What do our "soon" non-customers (frustrated customers) think? What are the aspects on which customers are always disappointed? We can also look for difficulties in the experience of our conscious non- customers: what drives them to refuse or ignore our offer? So where do they go? What do they do ?

In conclusion, I want to share some quotes with you:

The difficulty lies, not in the new ideas, but in escaping from the old ones, which ramify, for those brought up as most of us have been, into every corner of our minds.
J.M. Keynes

If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.
Henry Ford

A camel is a horse designed by a committee.
Pierre DAX 

The EHSQ department's role would therefore be to ask the steering committee to look for innovative new strategic positionings to make a difference in its market.

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