Put the Customer First

As he built his company, Konosuke Matsushita never lost sight of the importance of putting the needs of his customers and the public first. Panasonic's vision of the digital future is driven by the needs and aspirations of its business customers and millions of consumers around the world who use their products every day. By sharing their customers’ dream to live a fuller life, Panasonic provides ways of working smarter and enjoying the rewards of technological advances.  >>>

Treat Your Products Like Your Children

Konosuke Matsushita had extraordinary passion for both manufacturing and the products his company made. "The goods we make here every day," he would tell his employees, "are like children we raise with tender care. Selling them is like seeing those children grow up and go out into the world. It is only natural, then, that we should be concerned about how they are getting on in their lives, and so go and see for ourselves." Matsushita believed that maintaining this concern for what you produce is the first step toward building an ordinary supplier-client relationship into a stronger link based on mutual trust.

Complaints Strengthen Ties

Far from being an attack, a complaint should be treated as a valuable opportunity to strengthen ties. "Naturally I'm delighted when a buyer expresses compliments," Konosuke Matsushita would say, "but I'm just as pleased to get a letter of complaint." His reasoning was that if customers didn't bother to complain, that meant they had already decided not to buy any more products from your company. If, on the other hand, they expressed their dissatisfaction, even to the point of seriously considering going elsewhere for their needs, they were still interested. As long as you are sincere, treat their complaint with respect, and root out the cause of the problem. The relationship will become stronger for it.

People Before Products

Konosuke Matsushita kept saying, “We produce people, and we also produce electrical goods." He always believed that the measure of a company was the people who worked for it, that no enterprise could succeed if its employees did not grow as human beings, and that business, first and foremost, was about cultivating human potential. No matter how much capital, technology or equipment an enterprise boasts, it is bound to fail if its human resources are not developed. And Matsushita did not mean merely improving employees' technical know-how, management, or sales skills, though these are certainly part of the concept. For him, the true aim of personnel development was to cultivate individual self-reliance and responsibility, to guide employees to an understanding of the value and significance of their own work and of the obligation of the company to contribute to society.