The Hindu Business Line : Marketing<I> </I> vs TQM

WE HAVE said before in this column that the fundamental goals of TQM and marketing in a business are the same. Both emphasise a customer-centric definition of quality, which is a moving target, and not a fixed bull's-eye. Both are fundamentally meant to integrate the functions of a company with a common raison d'etre.

Yet, there are huge, essential differences between the two as ways of actually doing business, when it comes to the human side of operations.

Total Quality Management is logical, and aims to standardise, simplify and spell out processes, so that anyone once properly drilled in the steps can do any task. It calls for documentation and clear measurement at every stage. The business becomes a set of highly replicable and, hence, dependable processes, regardless of who is operating the machine or running the system.

Depersonalisation is necessary to ensure that one gets exactly the same service quality every time one visits a chain of stores or restaurants. So, a franchisee of a burger chain is clearly told everything, down to how long the potato chips should be fried, at what temperature, and how long they can be kept before being served. That the Big Mac is a brand-icon all over the world is, at least partly, due to this level of conformance.

Yet, here is the paradox; the same marketing gurus who admire such exceptional regimentation also argue in favour of increasing individual attention to each customer.

We have not just batch sizes of one but market segments as well. Mass customisation as practised by Honda, Levi's and National Bicycle Company are famous case studies that illustrate marrying the benefits of scale with greater variety at the delivery end.

If a product is standard, then the service is made more intimate, personal, and caring — making the most of the "moment of truth" where the organisation meets the customer face to face.

Think of the last time you were lost in a supermarket aisle looking for your favourite brand, or waiting in queue at an airline or bank counter.

Your experience was good, bad or merely all right, depending mostly on the time it took for you to get service and whether the service-person treated you with warmth and courtesy. Otherwise, you could have just as easily been disposed of by a machine that issued instructions to press this or push that button.

As technology narrows the scope for real product differentiation, personalisation has to increase to fill in the competitiveness gap. And such a difference must, of necessity, be delivered by individuals. Herein lies the problem. Good sales and customer service staff are rare, difficult to get, or train — and, most of all, to retain.

All of us must have had the experience, particularly in the financial services sector, of key people changing jobs frequently. We customers are left to explain our requirements all over again to yet another account manager, and the onus of establishing a comfortable level of rapport and understanding is now with us.

No wonder HR managers and marketing chiefs are most worried about retention of customer-facing staff.

Individualised incentives meant to charge them up include the freedom to improvise and function with greater autonomy, at the front end of the business. And that, in turn, means that some competitive processes must be allowed to be flexible with local variations as the demands of the market dictate.

Championing unqualified standardisation in the name of process orientation would be counter-productive in such a context.

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