The service has evolved acquiring new functions, both for customers and for the company; It is no longer just the service as such but it is accompanied by a quality "that is done, not controlled" and "is in everything". Taking into account the service approach for any type of company.
Quality is defined only from the service, since it is about measuring benefits or customer satisfaction. In this book we will see not only quality but Total Quality, which is an approach in which all the personnel of a company are involved in the constant improvement of the quality of its products, services, processes and thus the true or real satisfaction of the customer. client.
At this time, marketers must participate in developing strategies that help the company succeed through total quality excellence and must provide quality marketing as well as quality production.
The way to improve quality stems from total quality as we will see in this book.
Buyer, customer, service and total quality
When talking about the company, there are so many references to customer service, added value, human development, leadership; It sounds very bad to say that companies seek to "make money", but the truth is that the business company is there to do business, to make money and therefore the figure will always appear that if someone wins someone also loses. And for the company to make money it must have satisfied customers.
Although not all of us as clients can have good experiences and this leads us to think that there is bad service and bad service; the first question is a person's attitude; the other two are the result of a certain commercial policy and poor process design, respectively. We refer to the resource of organizational culture, as a determining element of the good or bad service provided by a company. But although not everything you see is bad, there are people who take the trouble to help customers. For this reason there are 4 conditions of a good service: to put interest in the contact; spontaneity and resolution capacity in contact; go one yard further; fix when things went wrong.
People do care to be treated with kindness, but what really matters is that they faithfully give them what they are looking for, and what they promised; people buy features and not products; He does not buy a car, but everything that car can do. The importance of perfecting the fulfillment of the function to unsuspected limits is always valued.
But what complicates this approach to service is the enormous diversity of buyers who approach our companies; We don't segment markets, they are simply segmented; We describe the segments, on the other hand we have to take into account that a market is not continuous, what concerns is to know how they behave, identify the group and describe what they do to be able to go with the appropriate equipment.
The human being is rational but he is also emotional and capricious and so much more. He is hardly capable of expressing all this in that at a certain moment it moves him to want something or to prefer a specific option. And fish (men) are that rare. It is difficult to describe with very Cartesian parameters what they really want. They themselves, on countless occasions, do not know how to express it either.
We must also recognize the ebb that is a psychological mechanism, which makes a buyer "retrace his steps", internally, after making the purchase. The buyer tries to solve it in one of 3 ways: return the product; resign; be manipulated.
Two things must be taken into account:
Perception is different from reality: reality in terms of process engineering does not necessarily produce satisfactory perceptions.
Perception equals the tangible and the intangible: it's about discovering it.
But we cannot forget that quality is only defined by the client, and the value that the client gives it will be given by what they feel to receive (perception) about what it costs them ($ and type of discomfort) so we can define quality as the accumulation of repeated satisfying experiences.
Contacts are an important part of satisfactory or negative experiences, moments of truth and these occur far from the General Director, that is why it is necessary to: identify the points of contact, they must be written, they must be related to the processes, a plan must be had of unexpected details and you have to train intensively.
A new way of leading
It is about that all decisions must be made at the moment of contact, that the entire company must go towards customer service, the director must be the foundation where the service is raised, must be the facilitator. The turning of the organization charts tells us about the one-way outward orientation and from there the dependencies are born, because men generally move for reasons of power, to direct, because what a business company seeks is to manage power. But all of this has more to do with using the power of Leadership (bottom to top), than the power of endowment (top to bottom).
Within the model, the client's reading and the choice of segment to which the company wants to dedicate itself is decisive.
The underlying variables of selection and training rest on the central idea that we are all someone's clients, and someone's suppliers, and that this chain is the one that ends up treating the company's real external client properly.
On the other hand, the jump to service (quality) is tangentially a problem of organizational culture, we are fundamentally faced with a process problem, so these processes must be measured according to what is promised and not with respect to other things. Sometimes people form perceptions that are not the reality of the processes, a perception that is formed with some points of the process that are above, above the waterline. Those who had designed the operational and administrative process forgot about the customer, so there was no quality in their experience.
Precisely because quality are processes, it can be said that quality is made, it is made but it is not controlled, it can be spoken as a “finger rule” of the famous 40-30-40. 40% design, 30% input and 30% processes. Making quality means starting from perception and from there going backwards, reviewing processes. For META (automotive materials, equipment and technique), quality is putting a high-level executive with good English to work two hours before normal working hours, in order to answer possible phone calls. It is redesigning processes so that the queue of clients is shortened, or an unexpected detail is found.
To make quality is to understand that quality is not invented by engineers, quality and service are the same and only process and that the only quality criterion is given by the client and any establishment of new processes requires a proposal from scratch.
Precisely because quality does not invent engineers and the client is the one who determines quality, that is why the expansion limit of a company is its capacity to provide 100 X 100 service and this is one of the key elements of the "New Way of Leading ”.
We must differentiate our clients to different types, with different risks. And know that this service is the one that creates the addiction (repeated satisfying experiences). Although the risk is terrible whatever the number of clients you have, and the number of secure clients exactly matches the number to which I am able to provide that service, and with the qualitative level of the service I offer.
Total Quality refers to the accumulation of repeated satisfactory experiences, that is, in terms of service, everything changes. The focused plant is followed by the flexible plant, a plant with duplication of equipment at critical points to respond with ample capacity to service requirements. The flexible plant simplifies the process and in the long run lowers the total cost of the service offered.
Good management is about changing the design cost to make the generation of new products and models more efficient. It is about achieving an improvement in the productivity of a series of functions traditionally considered corporate and in a way unrelated to cost; it is about achieving greater caviar productivity. Although good investments are also justified with intangible aspects, to give more service to do something more agile, or richer, that is impossible to quantify.
For all that has been said previously, all the change appears a huge accumulation of ideas, new points of view, new approaches and this we will call Demerketing, a reverse marketing; It is about reviewing pricing policies, creating companies that meet those unwanted requests, studying advertising, and taking care of seriousness. Advancing means changing schemes and attitudes, discarding many clichés, many managerial tools undergo a total metamorphosis. “All this constitutes a mental revolution. For some, costing is a matter of the wise man to find out how; the others of the para, of the rich to get how… "
Quality (services). processes and self-control. the leadership problem. other programs and quality awards
The quality / Service program is carried out within a scheme that is really simple: through a commercial investigation, the elements that make up true quality must be discovered in the client. Although simplicity does not free us from "industry", as they are multi-year programs. Aspects such as: supply on time; supply in smaller shipments; respond agile and very carefully to complaints (go one yard further); answer your calls at your hours; maintain high-level contacts; give decision to who deals with him; increase optionality (different desires); that we care about your business; avoid waiting queues; facilitate customer operation (create codes, facilitate physical control); debureaucratize relationships (simple communications, telephone orders);make arrangements for him; Give instructions; give guarantees of service; give technological push. All this so that our clients feel comfortable and develop.
If there is something very difficult, it is for people to feel the force of belonging to a group, to a united work team, in a specific project; because people tend to adjust to their position; there he feels safe doing things. These teams have to be built until the general quality / service program is well advanced. They involve 3 different levels: the improvement teams of any process or relationship capable of improvement: a personal relationship, a man-task relationship, or an instrument-productivity relationship.
A process is a set of tasks or relationships; the company is seen going through a series of tubes, tasks or relationships that are what make quality.
Similarly, the quality / service program ranks vigorously, this specific ranking is one of the different characteristics of our program, but the key to this action lies firmly in the improvement of perceived quality. For these mass movements to operate properly it is necessary:
That the vertex becomes visible: that it leaves the offices
That milestones are created: immediate complaints
Organize and spread a body of simple and repetitive doctrine: create a gospel
Creating challenges: what I want to achieve.
The previous points need Leadership. It means that instead of pushing, we drag, that people follow us.
And for people to follow a leader, they must perceive in him:
This man is capable: training is an endless story.
This man wants my good: moral climate, seeking the good of his people.
What he asks me is worth it, in this he is passionately committed himself: knowing how to enthuse, creating enthusiasm for a job well done, for service well given
Active leadership: you are not a leader without a fervent desire to win; Let's not put people in command positions who do not enjoy the position; it is necessary to make a sowing of emotional resistance (so that they do not break); opinions must be thought about, not counted; bosses who keep their word; people who don't love privilege; have security; decisions head on; approach the customer in a different way.
A cause-effect chain mechanism can be established: the supports create satisfied employees, these employees are loyal, they have high productivity, it creates value, it creates happy customers, they are loyal, it produces growth and profit.
On the other hand, external customers must be taken into account; so don't take surveys; have friends. Before the surveys - traditional questionnaires are not born so much of their limitations of reliability in the conclusions, as of a previous question. The handling of some techniques can be consolidating the terrain; is a number of interviews with clients, not supported by any questionnaire, which unfolds smoothly in a tone of trust and relaxation, this identifies attributes sought by the client, to discover groups of attributes forming segments and to approach the intangibles of perception.
Another method is the adopted client that Dupont USA manages, they call to know if the clients are happy or not, use of group meetings, use of secret client.
The client company model. the measurement problem
There are several gaps. The first is that "what I think the expectations are" rarely coincide; The second is between what I think the client wants and what one really wants to give him, this has to do with segments and satisfaction; And the third is that what I give them does not match the customer's perception, it is not reality.
To the measurement can be added as contrast elements, many other data such as: the study of complaints; the time card (time of entry and exit), the various sensors, the panel of key clients (permanent client relationships); executive contacts with the trench; travel of the executive body.
On the other hand, there is also talk of horizontal and vertical quality, which are two quality generation processes.
Vertical quality is the movement that is born in the heart of the business operation and that seeks to put the product in a position to meet the requirements of specifications in terms of design, skill, resistance, functionality, performance, so that the product placed in the market is able to compete adequately.
Horizontal quality is the complementary movement that focuses on the need to win, which is generated in all areas of the company to guarantee that it, in its entirety, is a quality company. What the customer actually buys.
What is very difficult is to talk about the points where the customer perceives quality, where quality has personal characteristics, where each person perceives differently, it is not only the product but the company, everything that the customer buys. Perceived quality is accepting that the customer is capricious, changing, innovative, demanding, rational and to satisfy him you have to identify his needs, knowing, in addition, that he changes continuously.
What the customer can tell us is what bothers them the most or why would they stop buying from us.
One of the characteristics of a process is its complexity, that is, the number of steps or operations that constitute it. Example service in a restaurant.
No matter how focused you are on the market, react quickly to the needs of your customers if you fail to involve and convince your suppliers of your same philosophy. But not only do you have to control and convince the supplier, you have to marry him, that is, we cannot pretend to compete in a market with global characteristics, without involving and linking the destinations of the suppliers with their customers.
On the other hand, the just-in-time scheme seeks to guarantee the quality of both the inputs and the internal processes themselves, it is oriented from the outside to the inside, it starts from the client's needs, of course it is also a process of cost reduction, of flexibility.
The relationship always starts with the head, CEO.
The general manager and his governing body are responsible for everything, the only one qualified to define quality is the customer, quality is personal, the important thing is to serve, a company without walls.
Reengineering is the study of zero-based processes, it tries to find business, anchored in customer satisfaction.
The so-called service companies
The so-called service companies proliferate and occupy increasingly prominent positions in the countries due to their importance. It is the contact section that determines the degree of service of each company. A travel agency that limits itself to selling tickets will be a product company, it is below the waterline, while an agency that is dedicated to selling and giving tourist trips provides a more pure service, the client is practically always in contact with the process.
Notes of the pure service companies: the commercial function is provided without an intermediary product (acquires acts); immediate human contact with the customer, the function is tailored; the client and the user are confused; services are not stored; there is only user, operator and way of doing; the perceived quality is more manipulable, managing the reflux.
Pure service companies condition many aspects of their operation. One of the most decisive is the treatment of everything related to personnel, due to the intimate relationship of the personnel with the process and contact, it is necessary to take care of what is related to personnel selection and their training, in addition to the same product conception and technologies of all.
It can never be forgotten that productivity becomes incompatible with good service, since a “saturated plant” is a guarantee of bad service.
The point is to never shy away from the “face to face” service that is the very essence of the act of serving.
Specialization is the key to the success of many service companies, it opens a wide field of business networks, that is, to those constellations of alliances, which are like the other side of the world of competition, it is convenient to treat the different services with processes different and different people, see each client as if it were our only client.
In service companies, the most important thing is attitude, but it should not be exaggerated, forgetting that it is not enough for staff to love their job.
Everything has to lead to the measurement of added value. This forces to place thermometers to try to verify that the client perceives what we say we do; and then try to find out more about what the client really wants. As for the thermometer inside the company, it is not about discovering them, but about negotiating them: each client-supplier agreement has to agree on how compliance will be verified.
Slack is a decisive element for the provision of a good service, here are some practices that lead to the optimal use of the real capacity of each moment: focus on my best service: formulate abandon the services in which I am least gifted, to concentrate resources in the best services.
Work according to reservation plan
Discourage the hours or months and favor the valleys
Playing with seasonality: removing a structure in its low season
When we talk about service companies we also talk about franchises that are intellectual property, patents that are the recognition of this right and its regulation in terms of coverage and duration of said protection. Product patent that seeks the manufacture or sale of products and procedure patent what is protected is the obtaining procedure. The service is not patentable, but it does involve specific know-how. McDonald's strength is its brand; that is what fixes and makes the franchisees quantiaos, brand is the recommendation that must be made to the franchisee.
The crowning of the service: guarantees and organization
It is difficult to understand the possibility of granting guarantees in pure services, where there is no body of physical crime; because there is no product; Because service is all offering, and that is about accepting that the customer is satisfied or not with a certain service, a haircut, a pizza delivery, is what we feel in synthesis. There are several terms of the service guarantee to study; WL Hart points out 5 conditions: that it is unconditional, easy to understand and communicate; easy to invoke and hassle free; and easy and fast to collect.
The communication and guarantee of all this to the client allows us to launch the latter against the organization. If to this we add the creation of a fund for guarantees, we will convert the address by service into an address by guarantees and if we want to see it from the angle of the employee in an address by pocket that comes to complement the changes in the remuneration system that we have suggested when dealing with internal customer-supplier relationships. The guarantees must contemplate how:
a question of justice
A way to compete
A simplifying element of management
The engine of our change in processes
There is also the program of unexpected details that is like an unannounced guarantee program, they are like the payment of the service, it fixes enormously positive references in the client's mind, it is the yard beyond.
On the other hand, establishing an adequate organization is also crowning a program of change. Before there was the matrix structure where there were product managers but the approach that is being planned goes to the other extreme, it does not try to solve 5 or 6 processes, it does not get stiff in a few processes, some already improved and stabilized processes go to be routine.
Management in the nineties on the edge of change
We divide the story into 4 phases: phase I, of the productivity of the saturated plant, begins in the post-war period and lasts around four centuries, it begins with the movement towards quality; where the world market was looking for products and in that seller's market the fight was simply to produce, it was an important take-off for industrial efficiency; and with general marketing and advertising, the buyer arrives and therefore companies begin to invest in brand marketing. Phase II or quality, extends in many countries of Europe and the American Continent the total quality programs and the attempts to involve the personnel in the administrative processes, either under the name of Círculos de Calidad, or by the brand coming from phase I quality control is fine-tuned, product output out, well,reliable, wide coverage, price and advertising.
Efficiency is achieved with Just in Time, designs, supplies and suppliers. It involves a whole series of consequences of training in attitudes, in orientation of one's own work, management of authority.
Phase III, which focuses on flexibility, flexible plant, and the requirement starts from the market, a market that is segmented, which broadens the range of its requirements, its demands. A huge world of purchase and for that you have to expand the variety of products. Phase IV the service is at the beginning of the eighties, with an approach to any type of company, in this phase almost all the elements and ways of doing it are reconsidered for an effective management, it has tangible and intangible elements, which become in repeated satisfactory experiences, processes based on the customer / supplier attitude.
Development of a service management program
The program of change to quality / service extends to several months, because in this model not all processes are interested in principle, but only those that affect the perception of the external client; it is better understood when the steps to take are detailed:
1. Reading the client, to discover their real needs, their expectations and points of possible business aggregation (what constitutes to improve their own operational business processes).
2. Description of processes: we must describe them as they occur in reality and in detail.
3. draw the waterline
4. contact mapping: it allows to identify the points of agreement, it must be indicated; the elements of the agreement; relationship with contracting parties, scope of agreement, number of agreements.
5. non-quality costs.
Once the new process is established, compliance (times, qualities) must be taken care of and a routine followed, but you have to have a routine with things but not with people.
General program
1. Awareness: awareness of the senior staff towards the model and its implications. Identify and develop the knowledge and skills required for the process, explain customer-supplier agreements, explain customer reading and auditing, train those responsible (basic statistics, process analysis), identify non-quality costs (waste or returns) and prevent against fiefdoms (people who condition and affect, are not leaders).
2. reading external customers: describe expectations and perceptions, visualize how the company feels from the outside.
3. Review of internal processes and procedures: translate needs, expectations, and possible business aggregations into operational and administrative terms.
4. Suppliers: long-term (permanent) relationship, reduction in number.
5. Reappraisal: customer audit (verify the change in perception), attention to complaints, review of commercial policies (from advertising to guarantees, to complete the service we want to provide), fulfillment of commitments.
The waterfall
Married to commitments, with it the so-called advance procedures materialize, that is to say, impulse mechanisms for management such as: specify, teach, measure, punish and reward.
Specify: by stating exactly what is expected of people with impact, objectives and policies.
Teach: by showing people your work as part of a process to satisfy a goal in the face of the needs of external and internal customers.
Measure: by graphically comparing each commitment
Reward and punish: by presenting the qualified cascade of each team.
It is important to define the external critical variables, which are those that arise from our external world, which defines the position of our product, or service in the market, it is our competitive differential.
The internal critical variables that define the requirements of the internal client to satisfy the project objectives and the framework for fighting non-quality costs. Once these two are defined, the following sequence follows:
Photograph of the current process: graphic description of all the sequences, and all the people involved in each department of it.
Presentation of the photograph: it must be impressive, showing the urgency to be addressed, and the need to eliminate the differential in competitiveness.
As a final document, the management of the waterfall is useful, we refer to the graph that relates the commitments or tasks of people with the achievement of a specific objective. Elements:
Title: process name
Update date: last revision
Objective: statement of internal and external critical variables.
Impact: quantitative and qualitative description of what it is worth to achieve the objective
Responsible: people committed to achieve the objective
Non-quality costs: non-compliance in terms of service
Stages or concepts: homogeneous activities in chronological form, each stage has a date, objective, and policy.
For me, this book is a way to understand better that when we talk about quality we also talk about service and that one goes hand in hand with the other and thus lead the company to a path of success, it is no longer the task of using foreign capital to complete. or replace the behavior of the capital market, in addition this book helped me to realize that achieving the path of success is not an easy task but it should not be intimidating either, it should not only be the great executives of powerful companies who speak about the subject.
Marketing is an element of the market that is found in our economy continuously because in any action that we carry out, the theory is being applied, in the same way most of the transactions that are carried out seek to satisfy the mutual needs between buyer and seller. Whenever we talk about total quality we talk about repeated satisfactory experiences and this helps me to take it into account.
As the marketing revolution gathers momentum, major changes will take place, the concept of customer at the center will remain valid, but the business must adapt to the changing tastes, whims, desires and needs that have always characterized the consumer.
This book speaks of true quality and I find it good, but I definitely did not like the insistent way in which the author repeats things and that he has to introduce it in addition with words like: although it is a risk of being redundant and obvious, and although already In previous pages we have alluded to the question, we must insist; They should definitely organize each chapter or part in an orderly way so that I don't have to repeat everything in each chapter, because I was reading and it seemed to me that he was talking about another chapter and not the same topic.
On the other hand, I think it is a very good tool in the new way of managing, because for me many of the problems found in organizations is that all managers think that decisions come from them and that customers have to accommodate to that and not they to the client. For me an example of a company that works for the client is BLOCKBUSTER, and to be able to prove it in some way here are the GOLDEN RULES OF THE COMPANY
Working for clients:
It is important to remember that without clients, BLOCKBUSTER would not have a job since everything depends on them. They are the ones who make the company grow and produce profits. Specifically, this means that customers must be put before "things." Help you with the selection of your preferences or accompany you to a category which you find interesting. All this in order to lead the customer to make positive purchases, and therefore return.
If in any case the situation with the client is negative, it is the employee's obligation to try to turn the situation into a positive experience.
If a BLOCKBUSTER customer decides not to return to your store due to a poor service experience, the store has lost approximately $ 234 for that year. If that customer is joined by 10 more people, the store has possibly lost another $ 2,340. This occurs if only one customer has a bad experience in the entire year. For this reason, it is always necessary to be clear that the social objective of BLOCKBUSTER is to provide a service to its customers, in order to develop the activity for which the company was created.
Treat customers as guests:
In this organization it is always kept in mind that the treatment of a client is like the guest in his own home, this means:
- Be friendly and smile. Be courteous and sincere. Say "Hello" when the customer comes to visit a store. Say "Goodbye" and "Thank you" when they leave a store. Listen to them, to help meet their expectations. Serve them correctly.
It also means that it is forbidden to argue with a client, that is, not to argue with the guest. They are always right, so it is essential to always give them the benefit of the doubt. In some cases, that means asking the store manager or Assistant Administrator to help you deal with a problem. It should always be taken into account that the treatment of clients is like that of guests at their own home.
Deliver on promises made to customers:
BLOCKBUSTER makes promises to its customers and it is the commitment of the customer service representatives (CSR) to make sure these are kept. It is necessary to follow them to the letter to avoid displeasure with them.
Treat co-workers the way you like to be treated:
Treating others as you would like to be treated is necessary to keep in mind as this creates a pleasant work environment where you can see the dedication, camaraderie and teamwork of the employees.
Fun
Working at BLOCKBUSTER is fun, it all depends on who does it and how. This entertainment business is fun that is why the advantages are seen over other organizations. Having an active interest in movies, both those that are in theaters and those that are for rent, is necessary for a good performance. It is necessary to talk with clients and with co-workers, so that there is a relationship between all and thus provide help. Part of the fun is in the positive attitude, all this must be reflected before the customer so that he feels the same when visiting a store or an office.
For me, this is a good example of quality, since they are aware of what the true task of the company is, and like the internal client, it is also pleasant to work. Without forgetting that total quality is made up of many more things such as processes and procedures, suppliers.
On the other hand, he reiterated that not only managers or employees make the company, but that the client is an essential part of it; since they are the ones who are going to decide whether the business objectives are met or not. Clients seek fair prices, added value, support, advice, and excellence in service and quality.
In conclusion, total quality must begin with the needs of the customers.
Quality must be reflected throughout the company.
Service, quality, reengineering are one and the same package.
A customer is a shopper with an addiction.
People buy features, not products.
Management by service really culminates in management by guarantees.
It is designed to prevent not cure.
Reflux should be calmed.
Pamper stable clients to the limit.
Don't waste money on things they don't ask you for.
Do not deny the customer what he asks, do not assume anything.
Quality can always be improved.
Total quality requires total employee commitment.
Quality is made, it is not controlled.
People have reflux, they regret it after every purchase.
And do not accept that everything works.
