Dr. Joseph M. Juran, one of the foremost quality giants of the modern era, defined quality as ‘fitness for use.’ In other words, discover what your customers expect and consistently deliver. This remains a guiding principle for any quality system and should apply to product-based as well as service-based environments. 

If you’re reading this, you’re probably well-versed in the basic quality tools. At times, however, you may find positive results are either lacking or slow in coming. Something seems to be missing. 

Every case is different, but it just might be the missing piece to the quality puzzle is service quality. It is the catalyst needed to produce the results you need, want, or management expects. 

 There are experts, some with very good track records, who make a lot of money selling their services or books with ‘catchphrases’ to draw companies to them for training, consulting, etc. But it all breaks down to a few simple characteristics to deliver quality service. 

Based on my half century of experience coupled with what research has shown, customers require timeliness, reliability, empathy, assurance, and tangibles.  

The above characteristics surfaced during feedback from focus groups when I was leading a team to develop and initiate a program for a product-based company with many supporting service products. This program was so successful it was adopted corporate-wide and was eventually referred to as Quality in the Office. We embarked on this initiative to apply what was learned improving our manufacturing processes. The aim of this initiative was to certify office (service) groups. 

Certainly, we found interactions among these basic characteristics but found it important to address each separately. This led our team to think about the best ways to ensure they were delivering the best service possible. Let’s briefly discuss each of these characteristics. 

Timeliness: In a former assignment to create and roll out a service quality initiative, focus groups were clear that customers expect quality service. No matter what the service or how complex, they expected this service in a timely manner. Maybe it was a reliability or durability test on a new product. A detailed analysis concerning field failures. It could also mean something as simple as starting a meeting on time. Or expecting a reasonable waiting time in a doctor’s office. No matter, time is critical for customers. 

There is power in knowledge. What do your customers expect? What is your response time to achieving a service request? How long does it take? Is the service completed on time? What is the quality of your service? How long does it take to correct a service error? These are important questions, and the results are necessary to improve your timeliness at delivering service quality. 

Beyond customer surveys and focus groups, possible tools include, but are not limited to, run charts, Pareto charts, Gantt charts, and program evaluation and review technique (PERT) charts. 

Reliability: Customers want on-time and reliable services EVERY time. That may include consistently meeting due dates for a project. It might involve technical data analysis from product reliability tests.  

No matter what your product or service, ask yourself: How do we design reliability into our service? Is our service delivered the same every time? What are the potential service failures? What is the mean time between service failures? 

One of the tools our team found valuable was failure modes and effects analysis (FMEA). Another important technique was poka-yoke (mistake-proofing). It might be surprising to learn, but we found the bathtub curve was advantageous. Since we were a product-based manufacturer, as many of our readers are, some of our office areas needed more technical and analytical help. To improve installation service and deliver enhanced maintenance service the bathtub curve was valuable.  

Furthermore, other than FMEA and the bathtub curve, we utilized quality function deployment (QFD which is also referred to as the House of Quality) for service areas. QFD provides a graphical method of showing relationships between customer wants and service (or design) features. It uses matrices to list the attributes a customer wants and compares it to the services that satisfy customer wants. Since there were no computer programs at the time QFD was tedious work; however, with the advent of computer software, using QFD is a lot easier and usable for everyone. 

Consider what can be done to improve the services you provide to your customers. While available products and their quality brings first-time customers, excellent service quality keeps customers coming back. Our next column will continue this discussion.