When it comes to quality management, it may seem like these are people dedicated to verifying, checking, document reviewing, generating new documents. In short, a set of tasks for which a special work team would be needed. And you'll say, "I can't hire someone else to do these tasks."
It is true that this happens many times, but it depends a lot on the approach that each company gives to the quality of the service and the objective for which it has implemented such a system. There are companies that need a quality certification and work for that. So they start by generating the necessary documentation and then run that system.
But if your motivation is not a particular certification, to carry out quality management of the service, you will generate documents only when you need them and, as you optimize your service, you will complete that system, which finally, if you consider it, you will be able to certify it.
In this last methodology, then, what would day-to-day be like?
You would not have people dedicated exclusively to managing the quality of the service. Yes, you could appoint someone to watch over the system, to motivate, to push, but not to dedicate all day to these activities. The more integrated they are into the usual tasks of your work team, the greater effect they will have on quality.
So what specific activities related to service quality management are carried out by the personnel who provide the service? To begin with, the quality activity par excellence will be the realization of the service.
Yes. Any other activity would not make sense if the service is not provided with quality. What good is a well-written policy, a perfect procedure, a complaint register, if in the end the service remains the same? The difference when working with quality is that this realization of the service is supported by adequate standards, warnings placed in the right place to avoid errors that can have a high impact. A training of people aimed at achieving excellence.
In addition to performing the service itself, the staff generates records during its operation. A record is evidence that something has happened. Record the cleaning time on a form and the signature is a record, evidence that the cleaning has been carried out.
Another additional activity will be to analyze problems, propose and implement solutions. This requires a specific working time. It can be, for example, one or two hours a week. From all the staff? Yes, ideally everyone should perform these tasks. And you will say, who pays for that work time? That time pays for itself. What consumes the greatest cost: an hour a week analyzing the causes that caused a complaint from a client, or losing that client forever and all those who later will have the same problem for not having been analyzed? Is it more expensive the time an employee carefully files the documentation instead, or the time (unpredictable) searching for an important document while a customer is waiting for it?
So are activities added to the day to day? Yes, certainly. Planned, accurate activities that you know will ensure the quality of your service; But you will also eliminate many others, unpredictable and random, that consume much more time and risk of directly affecting your customers.
Rest assured that working with quality will also suit you from a cost point of view. Don't be afraid to incorporate the correct activities to do it.
