case study of a company that was forced to revise one of its corporate objectives in favor of ensuring customer satisfaction. UPS always assumed that customer satisfaction was synonymous with on-time delivery. Consequently, UPS focused its efforts on exhaustive research aimed at cutting delivery time. The company conducted time and motion studies, redesigned its trucks to facilitate driver exit and entry, and even analyzed how long it took customers to answer their doorbells. Company policy mandated that all next-day parcels were delivered by 10:30 in the morning. In surveying customer opinion, UPS structured its questionnaires to focus on delivery time exclusively.
Once UPS began its TQM program, the company decided to elicit a broader range of customer opinion. The questionnaires that UPS distributed included open-end questions that encouraged its customers to verbalize their concerns. UPS was surprised with the consensus that its customers wanted more interaction with the company's drivers: "If drivers were less harried and more willing to chat,
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