Service Quality: Still an Oxymoron?
Companies continue to operate in
a vacuum.
A. Blanton Godfrey
agodfrey@qualitydigest.com
One of the pleasures of writing
this monthly column is the chance to rant about things that
go wrong. In my March column, "Press No. 2 for Poor
Service," I wrote about the frustrations of trying
to deal with most service providers over the telephone.
This struck a nerve with readers, and I learned that many
of them had experienced service-quality encounters far worse
than mine.
In a May 8 Wall Street Journal article titled "In
Search of the Operator," Jane Spencer illustrated how
bad telephone service quality has really become. Spencer
researched the telephone services of a number of large service
companies. Her results weren't surprising. The old option
of hitting zero to be routed to a human has been eliminated
by most companies. They want you to wander, lost and lonely,
through voice-mail hell until you stumble on the answer
to your question or give up. Service desks for technical
support are among the worst. Average wait times are between
eight and nine minutes, with waits of more than 40 minutes
not uncommon.
Of course, service via telephone isn't the only area that's
declined. The American Consumer Satisfaction Index consistently
reports declines in service quality of many types. Anyone,
like me, who has recently moved from one state to another
and dealt with service companies has experienced firsthand
just how bad it really is.
The problems start with basic services. We bought a new
house with two coaxial cable outlets and two phone outlets
in every room. But there was no outside connection to the
house. When I questioned the builder, he said he'd given
up trying to deal with either the telephone or the cable
company. They both subcontracted all their work and changed
subcontractors so often he didn't even know whom to call
(not that it mattered because they rarely respond). In our
case, they showed up after the house was finished, and it
appeared they'd have to auger a hole under the concrete
driveway to reach the indoor connections. The telephone
company solved this problem quickly: A technician simply
laid the wire across the driveway and went away.
It took the cable company about three weeks to figure
out what to do. Technicians ran the coaxial cable in from
the other side, then under the house and up next to the
connecting box. Eventually, someone from the phone company
returned and ran a trench 270 degrees around my yard to
come in at the far side of the house and also go under it
to the box.
Things didn't go very smoothly in the kitchen either.
We splurged on a fancy refrigerator with door panels to
match the cabinets. This involved some cabinet modifications--a
process that took four months. When the parts finally came,
I stayed home to talk with the installer and ensure that
everything went OK. I thought, with our job being his first
of the day, nothing would go wrong. Why am I so naive? He
arrived an hour late, worked for an hour, and then discovered
he didn't have the right type of wood for the cabinets.
He had to track it down and return that afternoon to finish
the job. Then we called and waited for him to get back to
us about leveling the refrigerator, which the original installers
had left more than an inch off-level, both sideways and
front to back. He told us that leveling wasn't his job.
So now we have to call the dealer and wait for someone else.
About a week later my wife noticed the ice maker wasn't
working. It didn't take long to find out why when I pulled
the refrigerator out: When he'd finished his repairs, the
cabinet guy hadn't bothered to hook up the water line. He'd
also left all the sawdust and trash from his work behind.
One minor triumph came when we finally--we hope--got the
security service from our old home to stop billing us for
cancelled service for a house we sold four months previous.
My wife's cell phone billing mystery was solved when I noticed
that the refund checks we kept receiving equaled the overdue
bills they also sent. Evidently they were depositing our
payments to the old account and then sending us overdue
bills for the new account.
For most services, all people want are clear promises
made and kept. We'd like to know what to expect and when
to expect it. Our homes should be left as clean after the
service as before. The correct parts for a job should be
on hand, and the job should be done right the first time.
The bill should be correct. It really isn't that hard.
Perhaps the problem lies with us consumers. We've become
so tolerant of poor service that we don't hold people accountable.
When we do switch service providers, we complain to each
other, but we don't take the time to tell the company why
it lost our business. Because most companies have no active
feedback systems, they also have no information about their
true level of service.
A. Blanton Godfrey is dean and Joseph D. Moore Professor
in the College of Textiles, North Carolina State University.
He is also the founding editor of Six Sigma Forum Magazine
and the co-author of the recently published second edition
of Modern Methods for Quality Control and Improvement.
Letters to the editor regarding this column can be e-mailed
to letters@qualitydigest.com.
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