Quality may well be the biggest competitive weapon of the 20th century and beyond. At today's prices, people don't want cars that aren't perfect, toothpaste tubes that leak, houses made with inferior materials, stores with rude employees, or airlines and restaurants that provide poor service. And while most customers don't bother to complain, they simply take their business to other companies which offer the service they expect or products of better quality.

Tied to the whole issue of quality is customer service. This means understanding what product and service attributes your customers value, why they value them, and how your company measures up against those attributes. It's no longer safe to assume that just because your customer complaints are low, the majority of your deliveries are on time, and your price is competitive that your customers perceive you as a quality- and customer service-focused organization.

One way to help your employees focus on customers and their needs is to have them view each other as internal customers. This means realizing that for whatever jobs they perform, other employees are impacted and impact them - from the chef in the kitchen to the person in the adjoining office, the stock boy, or the next person down an assembly line. Focusing on your internal customers is key to any successful quality/customer service program, as is the mind set of never being satisfied even when you think things are perfect. The bottom line in customer service is that it's only as good as the customer says it is. When employees start focusing on how to better meet the needs of their customers, they become more sensitive to the processes they perform and how to improve and/or change them to achieve the results the customer desires.