While all employees have significant roles to play in quality improvement, the leaders of an organization control 85 percent of the potential for improvement. Top management must lead by doing. Customer satisfaction is the goal of quality improvement . Achieving it requires focusing on customers rather than on the organization's product or service. An organization with a quality culture listens to customers' needs and then designs products and services accordingly.
Organizations have internal customers, too.
The person who receives a work product is a customer, even if that person is inside the organization. Whether internal or external, customer satisfaction is always the goal. Employee involvement and ownership is essential to achieving both customer satisfaction and continuous quality improvement. Employees in a quality culture are empowered to use their knowledge and ideas to deliver customer satisfaction and to improve work process. They know how to use problem solving techniques and how to work in teams.