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Put the Customer
First
As he built his company, Konosuke Matsushita
never lost sight of the importance of putting the needs of his customers and
the public first.
Panasonic's
vision of the digital future is driven by the
needs and aspirations of its business customers and millions of consumers
around the world who use their products every day. By sharing their
customers’ dream to live a fuller life, Panasonic provides ways of working
smarter and enjoying the rewards of technological advances.
Yin-Yang of Customer Value Creation
Treat Your Products Like Your Children
Konosuke Matsushita had extraordinary
passion
for both manufacturing and the products his company made. "The goods we make
here every day," he would tell his employees, "are like children we raise
with tender care. Selling them is like seeing those children grow up and go
out into the world. It is only natural, then, that we should be concerned
about how they are getting on in their lives, and so go and see for
ourselves." Matsushita believed that maintaining this concern for what you
produce is the first step toward building an ordinary supplier-client
relationship into a stronger link based on mutual trust.
Customer Success 360
Complaints Strengthen Ties
Far from being an attack, a complaint should be
treated as a valuable opportunity to strengthen ties. "Naturally I'm
delighted when a buyer expresses compliments," Konosuke Matsushita would
say, "but I'm just as pleased to get a letter of complaint." His reasoning
was that if customers didn't bother to complain, that meant they had already
decided not to buy any more products from your company. If, on the other
hand, they expressed their dissatisfaction, even to the point of seriously
considering going elsewhere for their needs, they were still interested. As
long as you are sincere, treat their complaint with respect, and root out
the cause of the problem. The relationship will become stronger for it.
People Before Products
Konosuke Matsushita kept saying, “We produce
people, and we also produce electrical goods." He always believed that the
measure of a company was the people who worked for it, that no enterprise
could succeed if its employees did not grow as human beings, and that
business, first and foremost, was about cultivating human potential. No
matter how much capital, technology or equipment an enterprise boasts, it is
bound to fail if its human resources are not developed. And Matsushita did
not mean merely improving employees' technical know-how, management, or
sales skills, though these are certainly part of the concept. For him, the
true aim of personnel development was to cultivate individual self-reliance
and responsibility, to guide employees to an understanding of the value and
significance of their own work and of the obligation of the company to
contribute to society.
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