More effective leadership can bring higher service quality

Citation

Rausch, E. (2001), "More effective leadership can bring higher service quality", Measuring Business Excellence, Vol. 5 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/mbe.2001.26705aab.004

More effective leadership can bring higher service quality

In service organizations, far more than in those which create products, the actions of people are the key to, and the essence of, quality.

One could argue that, in the manufacturing industries, people design the machines, staff them, take orders, respond to inquiries, and send the products on their way. Therefore, and that is certainly true, what people do, does influence all aspects of quality.

Still, only some of that is hour-to-hour, day-to-day, every day.

In service organizations, almost all of it is.

When a machine operator "falls asleep" at the switch and the product winds up with defects, these are usually caught by people further down the line – assemblers, testers, inspectors, packers.

When someone in a service organization fails the same way, chances are that the customer, client, or the public will be the first to know.

Nothing new about all that.

It is also obvious that functional decisions of managers have influence on quality. In service organizations, however, the behavior of managers as leaders is likely to have even greater potential for good. Managers who are effective leaders bring an environment that is both satisfying for staff members, and achievement oriented at the same time. They are able to gain full support for a norm which says that anything less than the very best is not good enough.

So, the question is: what can managers do to be such leaders?

Fortunately there is a fairly easy road.

Functional and leadership considerations

It starts with the awareness that there are two types of considerations that should enter every decision: those that pertain to the function and those that involve the leadership aspects in management.

The functional aspects of decisions are those considerations which pertain to the work, such as operations, customer service, marketing, or accounting, and to the organization's activity, such as banking, engineering, IT or IS, retail, health care, or government agency work.

The management/leadership aspects are those which apply to all functions and types of organizations. Although equally important, they are often given less thorough attention because training and experience of most managers concentrates primarily on functional issues. Furthermore, short-term job success, at least in the past, often heavily favored functional competence. That, however, may be changing as we move further and further away from an industrial to a service economy.

These management/leadership decision considerations involve the issues and skills related to:

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  Appropriate participation in decision making and planning.

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  What and how to communicate with stakeholders, individually and in groups.

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  How to set goals for the organization or organizational unit (decide on direction and priorities, including vision), how to organize to achieve them, and how to assign accountability.

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  How to ensure coordination, and stimulate cooperation, while anticipating, preventing, and managing potentially damaging conflict.

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  How to ensure that there is at least adequate competence and that most effective use is made of competence strengths of staff members and/or teams.

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  How to ensure that intangible, as well as tangible, rewards are provided for staff member contributions, and not only for the spectacular ones.

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  How to ensure an acceptable level of work-related stress.

Sounds as though things got complicated; too many issues for a "fairly easy road".

Let's look at an illustrative scenario to see whether this is true.

ABC Communications – an illustrative example

The ABC Communications Company developed, and uses, a very friendly worded telephone recording on its customer service line that expresses empathy with the person who is holding on the line.

However, traffic on the line has become very heavy and some customers have to hold on for as long as ten minutes during the busiest times of the day. Meanwhile the recording repeats, frequently, between soothing music interludes, how well the customer service people understand the situation. It explains that a representative will soon pick up, that the company is doing its best to get someone to the customer quickly and that, when that happens, the customer will get the same high quality service as the person being helped at the moment. It even tells the customers, from time to time that they are next even though that is not necessarily true.

The recording which had been intended to improve customer relations, understandably began to have a negative impact as more and more customers reached the frustration stage. As the complaints increased, the marketing director concluded that something should be done. He met with the customer service manager and they decided to resolve the obvious problem – the customer service manager would arrange to change the recording.

The new recording provided information about the hours when the line was least busy and the wait would be shortest. It also gave the busiest times and informed customers that the wait during those times was up to ten minutes.

After that, there were hardly any complaints.

A few weeks later, at a management staff conference, the customer service manager and the marketing director congratulated themselves on a job well done.

Was it, really?

Yes, the number of complaints had decreased dramatically. But, did service improve? Were any deeper problems uncovered that might have existed in staffing, competence, morale, or efficiency, of the customer service function?

Were questions raised about by whom and how the original recording was decided on so that similar problems would be less likely to occur in the future? Did the event lead to another look at the decision making process in the organization and whether it could be improved?

These are the leadership considerations that should accompany the functional ones. Sounds like they bring tough questions – questions that are rarely asked by managers focused on the functional considerations, in the wake of a relatively minor technical problem. But they could be. And they would be, if managers were leaders that followed the "fairly easy road".

What then, is that "fairly easy road"?

It suggests that managers regularly ask themselves, and the staff members involved in a decision, three simple guideline questions. These questions are intended to remind of issues to consider with all important, and even with most of the less important, decisions. Maybe even with all decisions. Guideline reminder questions are not confining, they are not specific, and they do not restrict options. On the contrary, they are likely to stimulate creativity.

Three "C" questions

The three questions (Rausch and Washbush, 1998) are:

1. 1.

   What else can we do to ensure that we will reach the outcome that we are setting out to achieve, and so we'll know when we have to modify our implementation, or plan, because we are not getting the results we want? (How can we make sure that we will gain appropriate control[1], or coordination, over this process of "getting there"?). This is the Control question.

2. 2.

   What else do we have to do, as part of this decision or plan, if anything, so that the relevant stakeholders will have the necessary/desirable knowledge and skills? This is the Competence question.

3. 3.

   What do we have to do, that we are not already doing, or planning to do, to ensure that the relevant stakeholders will be satisfied with what is happening, or at least not be so unhappy that they will present obstacles? This is the Climate question.

The power of these three questions lies in their role as gates to better immediate decisions and to still better decisions later, as their deeper meaning becomes clearer and clearer.

Obviously, the more comprehensive a leader's/manager's understanding of concepts behind these three initial questions, the more likely that decisions will be of the highest quality.

But that deeper understanding is likely to come automatically, as the three questions bring motivation to learn more about the issues.

At first, managers answer the questions with their background knowledge, stemming from experience and education. Gradually the managers' horizon expands to include more and more of all the knowledge and skills associated with all the issues.

It might be useful to see how the guideline questions could have stimulated decision-quality improvement in the ABC Communications Company scenario.

When the decision was first made to prepare a recording, and at later times, the following subsidiary questions might have arisen, if they were not already being considered, from time to time, by the responsible members of the company management:

1. 1.

   From the Control question:

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     Who should be involved, when and with how much authority, in deciding on the wording of the recording, to ensure that both expertise in preparing recordings, and the various possible reactions of the listeners, will be adequately considered?

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     What monitoring of the recording should be considered, if any, to provide an early warning system for potential problems?

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     Who will be the primary person responsible for the continuing quality of the recording?

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     What is the "production" process in customer service? How effective and efficient are the responses that are provided? How can the process be made more productive so that more customers can be serviced, with the same effort, while maintaining and improving quality of responses?

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     How adequate is the staffing of the customer service function? Would greater flexibility be possible to accommodate the various load levels at different times?

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     How sound is the decision-making process in this organization?

2. 2.

   From the Competence question:

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     How competent are the customer service representatives in the various functions they have to perform – with respect to the computer functions, in their interpersonal relations, in knowledge of company services and staff, etc.

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     How adequate is the initial and ongoing training, coaching, and learning support? How could it be improved or made more efficient and effective?

   • •

     How appropriate is the assignment of responsibility for customer service staff competence?

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     What can be done to take better advantage of competence strengths of individual customer service staff members?

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     What can be done to ensure that there is the best possible recruiting and selection of new customer service representatives?

3. 3.

   From the Climate question:

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     What can be done to ensure that the stress level on customer service representatives is monitored to ensure that it remains within tolerable limits?

   • •

     What can be done to continuously improve the way in which the customer service manager, and other managers, provide evidence that they appreciate the various (non-spectacular but real, as well as exceptional) contributions of individual customer service representatives?

   • •

     What else, if anything, can be done to ensure that tangible rewards for customer service staff are, and will remain, fair in relation to other positions in the organization and to similar positions in the geographical area?

Conclusion – using the 3Cs

These are questions that probe into more and more fundamental issues, far beyond the specific challenges that triggered them. They lead to thoughts about the broader short-term and long-term issues that deserve consideration but which may not, otherwise, receive the attention they deserve.

Obviously, not all these questions need to be triggered every time there is a minor problem in an organization. However, and that is the main point, if managers develop the habit to ask themselves the three guideline reminder questions with every decision and plan, then detailed questions like these will come up, and will be acted on, as appropriate.

Habitual use of the three guideline questions, or similarly comprehensive and integrated ones, helps good managers become better managers and more effective leaders at the same time. It brings continuing quality improvement, as well as increasing effectiveness to the organization so it can better take advantage of, and adapt to, the changing environment.

Erwin RauschPresident of Didactic Systems, USA

Note

1. 1.

   "Control" does not mean tight control by higher levels in the organization, nor bottom-up control where managers are believed to relinquish their responsibilities. It means appropriate control, with high degree of participation, and with most decision authority at the lowest level at which adequate information and competence is available.

Reference

Rausch, E. and Washbush, J.B. (1998), High Quality Leadership: Guidelines to Becoming a More Effective Manager, ASQ Quality Press, Milwaukee, WI.

Action points

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  Managers need to ask themselves and their staff the three "C" questions relating to:

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    – control,– competence,– climate.

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  The value of the three "C" questions will increase as their deeper meaning increases in clarity.

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  Detailed questions will arise and be acted upon as a result of habitual use of the three "C" questions.