Professional Documents
Culture Documents
URING THE PAST don’t change the way they operate, they likely will fall off
SEVERAL YEARS, the chart - that is, go out of business. Eastern Airlines
Infrastructure
construct cannot be acquired by merely exhorting staff as teamwork, trust, and cooperation shape how we relate
members to love their customers. It comes about when to one another internally and to our customers
forward thinking executives organize their departments externally.”2 The ownership phase takes hard work
and base decisions on two principles: because the department has to determine which values
• Customers’ needs determine the department’s should be its guiding force. The department can make this
strategy. determination by conducting a self-evaluation and asking
• The department’s structure, systems, technology, customers for their views.
culture, and capabilities must be aligned with the During the ownership phase, the department also
strategy in order to achieve it. creates an improvement plan, helps staff members
The customer construct links the department’s develop the skills needed for the change effort, forms a
customer expectations, strategy, infrastructure (i.e., transition structure (such as a steering committee) to
structure, systems, technology, culture, and capabilities), launch the improvement process, and identifies and
and specific attributes or characteristics of the products or enlists the help of key stakeholders in the department’s
services being offered. These relationships are shown in improvement efforts.
Figure 2.
In Figure 2, note the gap between customer Phase II: assessment
expectations and the department strategy and between the This is referred to as the great awakening phase of the
department strategy and the department infrastructure. As internal service improvement process. Typically,
the finance department at Berlex Laboratories discovered, departments make decisions about what service to
closing these two gaps had great payoffs in terms of provide or how to provide it based on “the way it’s
jump-starting improvements in service quality. always been done” or on “gut feelings.” They fail to treat
2. The departments avoid helter-skelter improvement data as a strategic ally of service improvement.
activities. Using an orderly process, they focus on value- The finance department at Berlex had always worked
added improvements. Priorities are paramount. hard to satisfy its customers. There was only one
To achieve these two fundamental distinctions, problem: Much of what it provided was not needed. The
departments can use an improvement approach that department’s great awakening took place when customers
involves four phases: ownership, assessment, quality were asked for their input.
conformance, and continuous improvement. The key to high-quality internal service performance is
finding out what products or services your internal
Phase I: ownership customers require to serve their external customers better.
The private revolution is always the hardest. Deep- Begin by segmenting current services and customers; the
seated change requires commitment, which can only be Berlex Laboratories executives did this by developing a
gained by a sense of ownership. In the Berlex matrix of services and customers. Assess customers’
Laboratories example, recall how both department needs and reactions, along with feedback from your staff.
members and customers were involved. They owned the Zero in on the service gaps.
outcome. One frequently overlooked assessment tool is the
Critical to this phase is developing and committing to survey. As Joann Jones, director of Quest for Quality at
values that promote the customer construct. According to Honeywell TAC, commented, “Many organizations
David Lenz, the manager of public affairs for JC Penney: survey external customers, but how many survey the
“Step one in internal customer service is having the right
set of organizational values....At JC Penney, values such
Internal Service Quality cont.
quality and effectiveness of internal customer service?”3 environment, a department could become extinct.
T. Kerry McCarter said: “Surveys hold up a mirror to an Keep these key points about continuous improvement in mind:
organization. They enable you to say, ‘Surprise! We’re • If it's not planned, it probably won’t happen. Your plan
not doing well in those areas. What can we do to for continuous improvement requires timeliness,
improve?’ “4 accountability, and mechanisms for reviewing action plans.
• If it’s not measured, it’s not real. Measuring current levels
Phase III: quality conformance of performance and comparing those results to baseline
Once key gaps are identified, the trick is to close them. measures brings validity to the service improvement effort. It
The last thing an organization needs is more critical issues is also a way of gaining and maintaining key stakeholders’
that become organizational thorns because the issues are commitment.
never resolved or because the wrong action is taken. • If it's not evaluated frequently it might become a monster-
Organizations commonly fall into two major traps in this in-waiting. Interim progress reviews provide an opportunity to
phase: failure to set priorities for closing service gaps and revise action plans, which keeps the plans realistic and
incomplete or incorrect analysis of the root causes of the sustains improvement. Success breeds success.
gaps. • If it’s not true in the customers’ eyes, it just ain’t true.
Setting priorities sounds relatively ho-hum, but it can Everyone likes to believe that great effort breeds success. But
be a difficult exercise. For example, customers of has the effort led to satisfied customers? Customer satisfaction
corporate travel departments typically want fewer indexes must be evaluated before and after the effort to ensure
questions and even fewer restrictions when making travel that improvement continues to be achieved in the customers’
arrangements. Yet the department must remain true to eyes.
company guidelines. Thus, there is a perplexing question:
What if one customer’s needs conflict with another’s or Requirements for success
with another service the department provides? Executives who run such departments as information ser-
In determining priorities, answering this question is vices, marketing, finance, human resources, customer service,
especially useful: What is the impact on the department’s facilities, and purchasing must consider themselves
competitive advantage if nothing is done to close this gap? entrepreneurs. They and their colleagues are in business to
Most searches for root causes of service gaps are one- supply quality service to their customers. This requires
dimensional exercises. They tend to identify human developing the department’s customer construct, communicating
performers, inadequate corporate support, or demanding it to staff members, and using the step-by-step process to guide
and insensitive customers as the culprit. A far more quality improvement efforts.
effective approach is to use the organizational Quality service to internal customers converts to quality
infrastructure as a template for problem solving. In what service to external customers. If you think of your internal
ways do the department’s structure, systems, technology, customers as part of a chain that ultimately reaches and affects
culture, and capabilities cause a particular service gap? external customers, your department will be well on its way to
This approach usually uncovers a number of root causes helping your company win from the inside out.
requiring an integrated plan of attack.
For example, the finance department at Berlex
Laboratories found that there was a critical gap between References
the customers’ requirements for service quality and what 1. Personal interview with T. Keny McCarter by Wm.
was actually being delivered. When the infrastructure Schiemann & Associates. Fall 1992.
template was used to examine this gap, company 2. Personal interview with David Lenz by Wm. Schiemann &
controller Tancer discovered that there were a number of Associates, Fall 1992.
organizational root causes involved. This led to broad and 3. Personal interview with Joann Jones by Wm. Schiemann &
effective corrective action on many fronts: placing a Associates, Fall 1992.
member of the finance staff in each of the strategic 4. Personal interview with T. Keny McCarter by Wm.
business units, making major changes in information Schiemann & Associates, Fall 1992.
reporting and systems review, providing skill
development opportunities to strengthen department Mary Azzolini is the director of internal performance
members’ capabilities, and having the department’s top improvement practice at Wm. Schiemann & Associates, Inc. in
managers focus on the customer construct to reinforce the Somerville, NJ. She received a master’s degree in industrial and
staff’s customer orientation. organizational psychology at the University of New Haven in
Connecticut. Azzolini is a member of ASQC.
Phase IV: continuous improvement
Improving internal service quality is an ongoing James Shillaber is the director of corporate training and
process. Internal customer expectations are constantly organization development at Berlex Laboratories in Wayne, NJ.
changing as the department anticipates and reacts to the He received a doctorate in clinical psychology from Rutgers
changing needs of external customers. If service University in Piscataway, NJ.
improvement efforts do not keep pace with this dynamic