The Hindu Business Line : Importance of TQM for services sector

Total Quality Management is the key mantra for the manufacturing industry, but its benefits have been better realised by intense customer-oriented service industries — be it fast moving consumer goods (FMCG), retail, hospitality, telecom or banking. In service organisations, the TQM challenge lies in establishing smooth connectivity between business processes so as to retain the customer. The TQM approach should be to connect to the customer at every stage of the business process.

At the core of the service industries is satisfying the customer in every transaction. But, in reality, this rarely happens; indeed, customers are usually faced with problems and delays at every point of the business transaction. Obviously, this is rarely brought to the attention of the top management, except perhaps by a few loyal customers. Besides affecting the company's image, and the customer base, the cost of the corrective actions can be considerable enough to erode the bottomline.

Creating a Complaint Channel

Needed is a visionary who is "willing to listen" to every customer complaint. Being in the service industry, the customer expects the resolution mechanisms to be spontaneous. For this, the communication channel must be transparent and connect the top management and the customer directly.

BUSINESS PROCESS CORRECTION

It almost every one's experience to call a service firm, and the telephones remaining unanswered for long. A a service industry cannot afford to ignore the business opportunity a telephone call may represent. Corrective action often results in "punitive actions on the field staff", or free replacement/service to appease the `dissatisfied customer'.

Ironically, a customer complaint is never viewed as a symptom of business process deficiency. A good management would correlate every customer complaint with the corresponding defective business processes. This would help to put in place cost-effective corrective measures.

RESISTANCE FROM SENIOR LEVEL

Often, an idea may face resistance from the senior management, especially if the organisation is hierarchical and its people frown on lateral initiatives. Hence, preparing the human resource machinery to counsel the organisation, from the top to bottom, on TQM and the importance of , communications is essential. TQM can only be a collaborative exercise and resistance of seniors should not kill an initiative, especially in the service industry, where winning customer is in itself a difficult task and should not be made worse by losing even one.

STRONGLY EMPOWERED TQM

While quality control has a key role to play in the manufacturing sector, it remains largely neglected in the service industry. A quality control approach to cover all processes would be beneficial to an organisation.. Since in a service industry every aspect of quality is associated with every employee, the challenge to, and the importance of, the quality control department cannot be over-emphasised.

Putting in place an effective TQM mechanism in a service industry requires patience and commitment on the part of the management and the workforce to satisfy the customer.

(The author is a Chennai-based management consultant and can be reached at pandian@yahoo.com.)

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