Reporter's Notebook: Wipro's Five Tips For Improving Customer Satisfaction

Last time I checked, India-based IT services outsourcing giant Wipro Technologies had a few things going for it.

For its last quarter, ended March 31, it grew roughly 41 percent to about $3.47 billion (after currency conversions). Net income for the same period was up 44 percent to $677 million.

So, it seemed relevant to recount the advice shared by Suraj Prakash, vice president of the Quality Consulting Group, with the IT executives and other attendees of Forrester's IT Forum 2007 in Nashville.

Even though his presentation was ostensibly about steps to improve IT management, Prakash's comments evolved into a discussion of how to keep customers happy. His tips certainly are based on experience Wipro has had within large enterprise accounts, but they also apply in midsize accounts and larger small businesses that are seeking to create some discipline in their IT infrastructure.

So here goes, in no particular order.

Live by frameworks. Be proactive about applying proven management techniques such as ISO9000 technical specifications, CMM (Capability Maturity Model) and CMMI (Capability Maturity Model Integration) software engineering practices or Six Sigma quality resources at the customer-facing level to every project. (Rather than letting teams be pulled into creating a framework that is simply project-needs driven.) But don't let the customer or even the folks doing the work at the customer level have to deal with all the nuances of those frameworks. "Convert that wisdom into understandable procedures that can be used in the field. All the troops get to see is the integrated systems," Prakash said.

Insist on quality. But don't subject your technical staff to the compliance police. Provide feedback in the form of mentoring and tips on how to make the customer happier. Your best training resources will come from this process. "Look at this as helping your people produce a better project," Prakash said.

Measure. Repeat. Pick certain areas to monitor, and share the results across groups and divisions. Pick your battles, though, and remember that customer satisfaction trumps other measures. "That's the honest barometer, at the end of the day," Prakash notes. No matter whether you agree or disagree. Or think that feedback is unfair.

Insist on buy-in of your customer's senior management, as well as your own.

Don't be afraid to try what works. Even though your customer may insist that "things are different" in his organization, there are certain core functions that underlie them all. The differentiators lie on top of that. "Fundamentally, the structure of the process improvements are the same, it is the pace and rhythm that are different," Prakash said.