During the early 1990s, Dr. Michael Hammer proposed a revolutionary idea, reengineering. This is not an effort to automate the current work that an employee performs. This is a call to rethink and redesign the process to consider achievement of goals in ways that may not follow traditional lines. Attention to the needs and desires of the customer is paramount. Customers are demanding, among other things, lower prices, better information and quicker availability.
Information seems to be the key element to customer satisfaction.
The more you know about your customer the better you are able to provide the products and services they want. The more the customer knows about you and your offerings, the better he or she is able to make purchasing decisions. Certainly, the wide acceptance of the Xerox copier had a devastating effect on the carbon paper industry. In 1992, American Express realized that competitors, Visa and MasterCard, were eroding its market share with lower merchant charges and increased customer services. The last factor is the most confounding.