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Quality of Service stinks...
More from the Views from the Business Front Line Series: 19/08/02
By: Paul Di Carlo
What do you think of the typical quality of service you receive? I think the typical everyday quality of service stinks - across the board. And what's more, everyone I ask seems to agree! So what's going on? Why are there not mass expressions of discontent? On a personal basis, I didn't think too much about the quality of service I received on a day to day basis but a couple of incidents recently have focused for my attention.
What do you expect?
Now, like most people, I recognise that things can and do go wrong sometimes and that's OK as long as its occasional and its resolved relatively quickly. But I am also acutely aware that we can get used to almost anything, given enough time. And once we're used to it, we tend to stop noticing it, we can even start to expect it. Even if it stills rankles at some level, we reconcile the discomfort with a 'what can you expect?' response or something similar.
For most of us, our natural fear of conflict or being labeled as difficult holds us back from doing something about it and so instead we become resigned to it, accepting, ignoring, unquestioning. If we can we avoid it, if we can't avoid it we'll tend to put up with it. Some will even go as far as making excuses for the situation.
Repetition is a powerful tool for influencing people, intentionally or otherwise. Our acceptance of poor quality continues until something changes and/or our limit of tolerance or patience starts to break down. Once we start to consciously notice whatever it is we've been busy ignoring, we then quickly seem to notice it everywhere we look.
Now don't get me wrong, I not trying to nitpick here. With a background as a service provider and an extended period of providing advice to clients on service quality, processes, infrastructure and culture, both nationally and internationally, I know how difficult it can be to provide high quality service consistently; that's not what's bothering me. It's everyday poor quality levels I'm talking about; the inability of many companies to undertake and complete the most basic transactions successfully.
I'm talking about the high levels of poor product quality and the refusal of vendors to deal with these failures with any sense of responsibility or efficiency. It's about the insidious efforts of many companies to make the customer feel that they don't have the right to complain when they don't get what they asked and paid for. It's about companies that invest heavily in call centres and CRM that seem designed to ensure that you get tired out (or timed out) before anyone will take any responsibility for solving your problem. Its about an all too common approach that tries to make sure that you, the customer, have to put in all the effort to resolve any problems that occur. It's about a culture that's developed across the service sector that firmly and intentionally avoids any serious effort to provide any possible quality of service. It's about companies paying lip-service to quality.
Typical levels of service
Here's some typical examples from a quick poll of colleagues: One phoned a call centre of a High St bank and couldn't hear the person answering their call for the party going on in the background. When the call handler asked for them to quieten down, he was told to f'*** off. Not surprisingly, when the details of the service (car insurance) were sent by post they were incorrect. After much unsuccessful effort to get it resolved (a long story in itself), my colleague complained. No surprise, the complaints procedure and associated service centre did not work (repeatedly). With persistence, they admitted to losing the details (3 times). Eventually, the complaint was escalated to the CEO of the company, who impressively called personally to find out the details of the issue. Once the story, now a saga, was explained, the CEO’s response was along the lines of 'Is that all?'.
More everyday issues highlighted by colleagues were assistants who hold conversations while you're waiting to be served, consistently long queues, call centre staff who are abusive, redirect you on a merry-go-round of departments or simply hang-up on you, no responses to letters of complaint, long and complex procedures to deal with simple and inexpensive issues - often requiring that you write to some distant part of the organisation, delivery organisations that don't, staff who are overtly aggressive or rude at the merest suggestion of a complaint. I won't even bother going round the usual list of areas such as trains, buses, airports, the Health Service, refuge collection, local councils, the police etc.
What about the basics?
I was almost overwhelmed by the number of examples put forward and the strong emotions they generated in those describing them. What is striking is the number of service providers who seem unable to complete the basic steps of a transaction successfully. How do they make any money? For many, they seem incapable of getting through the steps necessary to complete the exchange of goods or services and the money involved. Some, more insidiously, seem to have recognised the problem for them and try to relieve you of your money as early as possible regardless of whether the overall transaction is completed or not.
More worrying perhaps are those transactions for advice, risk or protection based services that appear to be successful - only for you to find out later that the service doesn't work, the details were incorrect, lost or delayed and whatever you were told was to be provided is inaccurate, not valid or has exclusions. Unfortunately, many find this out when they try to exercise the options purchased.
Even within many large corporates, similar problems exist in the quality of internal services provided. Whether it's from the IT organisation, building services, accounts, internal consultancies or whatever, the same problems are encountered by clients and customers: help desks that don't help, support appointments that aren't kept, service functions, processes and constraints that seem determined to prevent the delivery of service rather than facilitate it.
But we're different...
Now if you're reading this and you are involved in providing services, you may be taking comfort from thinking that this doesn't apply to you or your group, company or whatever. You may think that you have it covered, that you have the performance figures and statistics to show how good your service is. You may feel reassured that by carrying out service ratings, after-sales surveys and follow up calls, you have a good idea of what customers think. While you may deserve praise for your efforts, the bad news is that it's very likely you don't have any real idea of what your customers think of your organisation and its products and services at all.
The irony here is that to the customer the relationship is still important. If they're asked about quality and they know they will be identifiable, they typically score your services as average, perhaps highlighting some area that could be improved - avoiding any sense of conflict is a higher priority. Most will also avoid any form of feedback in the belief that it will make no discernible difference to them personally and if the quality of service does not meet their minimum requirements for price and ease of effort, they will quietly adopt an 'avoid' strategy in the future.
At the street level where there is choice, this makes little difference to the consumer and falling sales provide the most effective feedback to the service provider. But if you are a provider of high value services to specific individual buyers or clients or you are an internal service provider, then knowledge of the real quality of service and the client or customer view of it becomes vital for success or even just your continued existence.
If you're serious...
If you're serious about providing a quality service, if you want repeat business and clients and customers that recognise and value the services you provide, if you want clients and customers that choose you over the competition every time, then there a few simple rules and strategies that make a real difference.
- Walk the talk, no bullsh*t ..., no lip service; make clients and customers the first priority from the bottom to the top of the company
- Fix your core service - from the clients viewpoint - 99.999% of the time
- Get a third party to talk to your clients about service quality on an anonymous basis (by telephone)
- Make sure your complaints procedure works even better than your core service, resolves issues quickly and easily and exceeds the clients expectations
- Create a culture where staff understand what real service means and the value of each customer to them personally, e.g. 5-500 satisfied customers equates to the value of your job this year.
So, if you think you provide an average service then its time to appreciate most customers will think it stinks. If you don't believe it and you want to provide a quality service, test your service. Try complaining and see what happens. If you want a more comprehensive view, start by getting a third party to find out just how good your services really are and go from there.
The greatest of faults, I should say,
is to be conscious of none in one's self.
Thomas Carlyle
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Reader Comment / Feedback
Posted on: 22nd August 2002
Sender: Rob
I install an off-the-shelf software product. The most difficult thing to get a company to describe is its return policy. "We aren't in business to take things back" is the attitude.
As a customer, I don't understand why my credit card is hit immediately when I buy, but I have to wait a month to get credit for a return......
Posted on: 23rd August 2002
Sender: Patrick Andrews
Outstanding service requires intense staff motivation....why should staff care about customers, unless the deal is based on their *mutual* satisfaction?
Posted on: 5th September 2002
Sender: Paul Di Carlo
In answer to Patrick Andrews - I'm not talking about outstanding service, basic customer care would be a start. The customer plays their part in the deal by paying for the service - not just the product - the service is included/expected as part of that.
Posted on: 17th September 2002
Sender: Nick
You get what you pay for. Then you vote with your feet. Welcome to Capitalism.
Posted on: 4th October 2003
Sender: Robin Tonkin
More money and less service and marginally faster than AOL. How do they sell it consistently?
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