Most TQM literature seems geared toward manufacturing and tangible products. I am struggling to apply these concepts in a high-volume service environment where the "product" is intangible. What are the specific hurdles I should expect regarding employee engagement and measuring customer satisfaction accurately within a TQM framework?
3 answers
The biggest hurdle in service-based TQM is the "inseparability" of production and consumption. In services, the customer is often part of the process, making standardization difficult. To counter this, we shifted our focus from product defects to "service encounters." We used TQM to empower front-line staff to make decisions in real-time. This reduced the need for top-down oversight and increased the speed of service recovery. Measurement shifted from error rates to Net Promoter Scores and internal "quality of service" audits that focused on the consistency of the human interaction.
When you talk about measuring "service encounters," do you use specific software tools to track these qualitative interactions, or is it mostly based on post-interaction surveys? I'd love to know how you quantify the "human" element of quality.
In services, the main barrier is often the lack of a visible "defect." You have to define quality through the lens of customer perception rather than just internal specs.
Jennifer is spot on. In our firm, we redefined "defects" as any instance where a customer's expectation wasn't met, which completely changed our TQM approach.
David, we use a mix of CRM analytics and sentiment analysis on recorded calls. While surveys are helpful, sentiment analysis gives us a deeper look into the customer's emotional state throughout the interaction. This data is then fed back into our TQM training modules to help employees recognize cues that lead to dissatisfaction before the call even ends, making the quality proactive.