For a company to have sustained growth and profitability, it is vital that a customer perspective be part of evaluating growth opportunities. At MESA, we are confident that it is possible to manage our company so that both the company and our customers are profitably rewarded. We don’t believe that a company has to make a choice between being a customer-based organization or a profit-driven organization – there can be a balance with both the company and customer being satisfied.

As advocates of total quality management, Baldrige principles, customer satisfaction and customer loyalty, MESA employees know that profits are the company reward for satisfying our customers. Back in the 1950’s, Peter Drucker and Theodore Levitt put forth the view that the satisfaction of customer needs is a company’s primary purpose. At MESA, we have strongly adopted that philosophy.

Carrying this philosophy one step further, MESA views customer relationships as the fundamental building block of our business value. Let me emphasize, it is the relationships that are the assets to MESA, not the customers. If this sounds contradictory, I’ll try to explain. If our company fails to target the right customers, any strategies we have for growth to sustain our company will fail. Any company that pursues unprofitable or unresponsive customers wastes resources that could have been devoted to building valuable relationships.

At MESA, our first step is to identify and target industries, applications or specific customers. Then, we focus on identifying and satisfying specific customer needs that are aligned with our business strategy. The final step in developing long-term business and personal relationships is delivering superior value to the customer. We want to be sure we don’t fall into the trap described by Robert Wayland in his book, Customer Connections:

“For many companies, the difficulty of achieving profitable growth is not a matter of running too slowly but of chasing after the wrong customers – customers who are either unprofitable to serve or who are unlikely to form profitable relationships, and customers who drain resources and effort away from the pursuit and development of more valuable relationships.”

We think we are exceptionally good at managing customer relationships because we are good at generating, managing and making use of customer knowledge. Through our quarterly Customer Satisfaction Surveys, we get current information about our customers’ business requirements. With this frequent customer feedback, we are able to make adjustments to our business strategies to insure we continue to create value for our customers. In the “Quality Quest” section of this newsletter, we will feature some of the results from our latest Customer Satisfaction Survey.

At MESA, we look forward to growing our future by continuing to increase our knowledge of our customers’ businesses and by strengthening relationships that are critical for us to remain the #1 CP provider in the industry.

Sincerely,