Quality Service

I read some great blogs about customer service here and here. To me, this simply illustrates the concepts that Dr. Deming began discussions about... decades ago! Granted, Dr. Deming applied his work to the manufacturing industry mainly, but later in his career he began to investigate and apply his work to the service industry as well. We would all do well to understand the main ideas - and they're very simple (even common sense to a few)!

Dr. Glasser's work in cognitive behavioral psychology sheds light on Dr. Deming's work, giving supervisors everywhere no excuse for poor quality. Where Deming would tell us that we must work on the system, Glasser has given us tools to enable us to better work on that system - specifically the part of the system which is human. It's much easier to work on the part of the system which is not human, and many new management approaches do this aggressively. But it's much more difficult to work on the part of the system which is human (and therefore it is extremely variable). Glasser's work helps supervisors to make changes on the human part of the system.

I knew when I worked as a teen and young adult in the fast food industry and the grocery store industry, that customer care is what set me apart from my peers (and managers liked having me as an employee). To me, it was need-satisfying to do a good job (met my need for power/significance, and for belonging). One day, one of my best friends (who also worked with me) decided we would reorganize the stock room (the back room warehouse) so we could more easily and quickly find the stock items for the store shelves. Our boss didn't ask us to do it. We took the initiative to do it because it met our need for power/significance and belonging (we worked together as a team).

I quickly figured out that the lowest paid workers have the largest amount of "face time" with customers. It didn't make sense to me then (nor now) that none of us had any specific training on customer service, nor were we paid well for doing that job well. Customer service (or "customer care" as its referred to now) was a hit or miss event. If you had employees that "got it" - great! If not, too bad.

It's a 98% systemic problem (as Deming would say). But, the good news is that we have the tools available to help us resolve this issue (thank to Dr. Glasser). What do you think about this issue?