Quality Control gone mad
I was told an interesting story today by a highly successful local business woman. She is arranging for her elderly father to move down to Queenstown to be closer to her. She has been looking for a house for him to rent but been put off by the rigidity of the application process. Her father has spent a lifetime as a highly respected professional within NZ and finds the thought of having to ask his old colleagues for a reference quite demeaning and embarrassing. The businesswoman has offered herself as a guarantor but without references the rental agency simply does not want to know.
This kind of rigid process does not provide any leeway for customer-facing employees to use their own judgement in deciding whether an exception could be allowed. In my experience this is a symptom of one of two things, either:
- The person who owns or manages the business is a control freak who is not willing to trust the judgement of his employees or
- Employees have been instructed to follow exactly the same process for all customers to ensure ‘quality of service’ is maintained.
The Control Freak
Unfortunately this term does apply to a lot of small business owners. They have so much of their personal time and energy invested in their business that they often have trouble coming to grips with delegation of authority. This is a leadership issue that can benefit hugely from coaching both on an individual basis and as a group with those to whom authority could be delegated. There are wide range of Change Management techniques available to help leaders understand both how to delegate effectively and how to fully exploit the extra organisational capability that results. If you think this is you please give me a call to discuss how I can help.
Quality Processes
The second cause can be much more insidious. After all, if you want to get a quality kite mark in any industry sector you need to show both that you have processes and that you apply them at all times. So quality has become confused with consistency – by adhering to the same process for all you are ensuring that every customer receives exactly the same level of service.
It’s hardly surprising that this misconception about ‘quality’ has developed. The theoretical and practical understanding of quality in business has, for a long time, been lead by large scale manufacturers. Their main concern has been to make their goods faster without increasing the number of defective items that they produce. Deciding what to manufacture in the first place has only relatively recently become a part of the quality cycle as pressure for greater efficiency has spread beyond the production line.
(Interestingly, these same global giants have used their in-house quality cycle (eg LEAN, Six Sigma etc.) to allow employees to take ownership of business challenges and thereby create a much more consultative environment and a more motivated workforce.)
Service Quality in a Small Market
To make matters worse, service quality for many large corporates can and does operate effectively in the same way. These global giants essentially exclude customers who stray too far from the median in their requirements and allow small niche companies to thrive around their borders.
Few companies within New Zealand are large enough to be able to maintain this attitude for very long. For a business servicing a small town or rural region, ignoring the needs of their non-average customers is a very risky attitude. While demand for the service they provide is high they may seem to succeed but they are leaving themselves vulnerable to their competitors. If a rival offers more flexibility of service or demand goes down they may find that the sheer numbers of customers willing to stick with their rigid process is not enough to keep them afloat.
If you’d like to find out more about improving service quality for all your customers contact me, Sarah Bogle, on 03 442 3645 or use my contact form.
I’ve seen a few references recently in the journals to the apple in the jar scenario. The original for this metaphor was actually a coconut with a small hole cut in one end and a few peanuts inside. It was used by monkey hunters who would tie a piece of string to the coconut and wait for the monkeys to find it. The monkeys were able to get their hand inside the coconut but had to make a fist to hold the peanuts. The hole was just too small for them to get their fist through; the hunters would pull in the string and that would be that for the monkeys. The monkeys simply weren’t able to handle the idea that all they had to do to go free was let go of the peanuts – they were not trapped.