Customer Service Principles – Perspectives Of Senior Manager And HR Manager

A. Customer focus:

The senior manager who is also the owner of the garage should have his focus on the quality management in terms of products and services for meeting the customer requirements. He should also ensure that the garage exceeds customer expectations thereby making sure that the firm is able to retain and attract customer confidence along with the other interested parties. In other words, every aspect of the customer satisfaction put forward an opportunity for creating more value to customers. Therefore, in other words, he should make sure that the garage should invest in resources in manner so that the customers derive the following benefits (Hoyle 2017):

• Enhanced customer satisfaction
• Enhanced customer value
• Enhanced customer loyalty and repeat business
• Enhanced organizational reputation and hence the customer base

The HR manager needs to undertake actions so that the resources invested enhance the customer experience. These actions are as follows (Evans and Lindsay 2013):

• The garage should identify their direct and indirect customers who receive necessary value from organization
• The garage should understand the current and future needs of the customers and their expectations
• The garage should draw a linkage between its objectives and the customer expectations and needs
• The garage should undertake planning, developing, designing, producing, support while delivering housekeeping and cleaning services including apartments, condos, homes, offices, schools etc.
• The garage should be in a position to monitor and measure the customer satisfaction and take appropriate actions
• The garage should determine and take actions based on expectations and needs of the parties that impacts customer satisfaction
• They should also involve in the managing relationships with the customers for attaining sustained success.

The senior manager of the garage should encourage its employees in improving the quality of housekeeping and cleaning service through creation of the unity of purpose, direction and engagement of people for aligning strategies, policies, resources and processes. He also needs to make sure that such changes are able to ensure following benefits (Oakland 2014):

• Enhanced efficiency and effectiveness in achieving the quality objectives of the garage
• Ensures better coordination of the various processes involved
• Presence of improved communication between functions and various levels of the garage  
• Improvement and development of capability within organization and its people for delivering desired outcomes 

The HR manager should focus on undertaking necessary actions for the garage so that it encourages the employees in improving the service quality. These actions include (Goetsch and Davis 2014):

• Communication of mission, vision, policies, strategy and processes of the garage
• Creation and sustenance of ethical and fairness models for determination of behavior for the employees of the garage
• By ensuring that the leaders at all levels act as a positive example to the other people
• By ensuring that people are provided with required amount of authority, training and resources for delivering services
• Encouraging, inspiring and recognizing the contribution of the people

The senior manager or the owner of the garage should maintain open communication channel by involving all people at all levels while maintaining their respect as individuals. The empowerment, recognition and competence help the people in achieving quality objectives. In other words, it is done in a manner so that the following objectives are derived (Boys and Wilcock 2014):

• Better understanding of quality objectives by people along with possession of enhanced motivation for achieving them
• Better involvement of the people in the improvement activities
• Better creativity, initiatives and personal development for delivering proper services
• Improved satisfaction of the people
• Increased collaboration and trust throughout organization
• Enhanced attention towards the culture and the shared values

The perspective of the HR manager in maintaining open communication channel within the garage depends on undertaking the following actions (Ooi et al. 2013):

• By undertaking communication with the people for promoting the importance of individual contribution 
• Through promotion of collaboration throughout the organization
• Through facilitation of open discussion and sharing of experience and knowledge
• Acknowledging and recognizing the contribution, learning and improvement of the people
• The garage should enable self evaluation of performance against personal objectives

In order to ensure the process approach to quality management, the senior manager or the owner of the garage needs to ensure optimization of the system and its performance for deriving the following key benefits (Ross 2017):

• Better ability of focusing on the key process and opportunities for improvement
• Adoption of a system of aligned process for predictable and consistent outcome
• Optimization of performance through management of effective process, efficient use of resources and the reduction of cross-functional barriers

The process approach adopted by the HR manager for quality management of the garage would ensure adoption of certain actions. These include (Zhu, Cordeiro and Sarkis 2013):

• The garage must be able to establish authority, accountability and responsibility for managing processes
• The garage should remain in a position to determine resource constraints prior to any action.
• It should be in a position to manage processes related to housekeeping and cleaning services and their interrelations as system for efficiently and  effectively achieving quality objectives
• The garage should improve the processes through available information along with monitoring, evaluation and analysis of overall performance of the system
• It should also set aside provision for risk management that influences the output and the overall outcome of quality management system

According to the perspective of senior manager, the management system approach followed by the garage involves identification, management and understanding of interrelated process of communication with the customers. This is because identification of the system is believed to contribute towards the efficiency and effectiveness of its products and services.  Although phone call have been the key channel for customer communication for introducing the service externally, nowadays, referrals, flyers, emails and various social media platforms  also plays a key role.

According to the perspective of the HR manager, the methods used for communication with customer needs to be aligned with the complimentary process for getting better efficiency (Scott 2015) in service. This involves undertaking of certain actions for ensuring effective customer communication. These include:

• The service provided by the garage needs to create first time impression
• The services put forward should have minimum hold times
• The garage should prioritize any customer service call that prefers to avail its service

According to the senior manager, in order to interact with the customers, the garage must contribute in ensuring continual improvement through its products and services although it has its own strengths and weakness. Some of the strengths and weakness of customer interaction are as follows (Fonseca 2015):

• Interaction with the customers with lead to improvement in the capabilities of the garage, its service performance and customer satisfaction
• It leads to enhanced focus on the determination and performance of the root cause followed by corrective actions
• It leads to the enhanced ability of anticipation and reaction to the internal and the external opportunities and risk
• It leads to breakthrough and incremental improvement
• It leads to an enhanced drive for the innovation

• Interaction with the customers leads to mismanagement of the customer expectations
• It might lead to failure of undertaking a thorough research of the problem
• It also leads to the choice of the wrong side

According to the perspective of the HR manager, the garage might attain various strengths and weakness related to interaction with customers. Some of the strengths and weakness include (Psomas, Pantouvakis and Kafetzopoulos 2013):

• Helps in the establishment of improved objectives
• Ensures training and educating people on the application of the basic methodologies and tools for the achievement of improved objectives at all levels
• It encourages the garage in the development and deployment of process for implementation of improved projects

• The garage might experience loss of tracking, reviewing, auditing, completion, implementation of the  improved projects
• Integration of improved considerations into development of newer and modified, process, goods and services may not always be possible
• Leads to ignoring the need for acknowledging and recognizing improvement 

According to the senior manager, the garage while responding to customers should include evidence, facts and data analysis so that they are able to attain the following benefits (Manders, Vries and Blind 2016). Any negative information must be avoided while responding to the customer. Some of the benefits experience by the garage includes:

• The garage experiences an improved process of decision making
• Improved assessment of service performance and ability of achieving the objectives
• Improved operational efficiency and effectiveness in delivering cleaning and housekeeping services
• Enhanced ability of reviewing, challenging and changing the decision and opinions 

According to the HR manager, response to the customers involves inclusion of the following information. The HR manager while interaction however leaves out information that might have a negative impact on the customers. Some of the information includes:

• Describing the products, services and strategies of the garage
• Informing them about how the garage focuses on the outcome of the service provided
• Informing them about the brand promise in relation to repair, replace, housekeeping and cleaning service

According to the senior manager, the garage maintains a mutually beneficial supplier relationship that helps in ensuring on-time deliveries. On -time delivery of suppliers is ensured through proper collaboration and communication (Laosirihongthong, Teh and Adebanjo 2013). However, the customers can be satisfied through the following steps:

• Through continuous exchange of information for improvement of quality of product or service
• Through performance of business activities including production, procurement and inventory planning
• A well-managed supply chain will help the garage in providing stable flow of not only the services but also goods.

According to HR perspective, the suppliers of a garage can ensure on time delivery along with customer satisfaction by adopting the following steps (Jain and Ahuja 2013):

• Through optimization of resources and cost
• Through building and improving long-term relationships with owners of the garage
• Through flexibility of joint responses towards changing customer or market expectations and need

References:

A. Boys, K. and E. Wilcock, A., 2014. Improving integration of human resources into quality management system standards. International Journal of Quality & Reliability Management, 31(7), pp.738-750.

Evans, J.R. and Lindsay, W.M., 2013. Managing for quality and performance excellence. Cengage Learning.

Fonseca, L.M., 2015. From Quality Gurus and TQM to ISO 9001: 2015: a review of several quality paths. International Journal for Quality Research (IJQR), 9(1), pp.167-180.

Goetsch, D.L. and Davis, S.B., 2014. Quality management for organizational excellence. Upper Saddle River, NJ: pearson.

Hoyle, D., 2017. ISO 9000 Quality Systems Handbook-updated for the ISO 9001: 2015 standard: Increasing the Quality of an Organization’s Outputs. Routledge.

Jain, S.K. and Ahuja, I.S., 2013. Strategies and success factors for overcoming challenges in ISO 9000 implementation in Indian manufacturing industry. International Journal of Technology, Policy and Management, 13(2), pp.121-139.

Laosirihongthong, T., Teh, P.L. and Adebanjo, D., 2013. Revisiting quality management and performance. Industrial Management & Data Systems, 113(7), pp.990-1006.

Manders, B., de Vries, H.J. and Blind, K., 2016. ISO 9001 and product innovation: A literature review and research framework. Technovation, 48, pp.41-55.

Oakland, J.S., 2014. Total quality management and operational excellence: text with cases. Routledge.

Ooi, K.B., Lee, V.H., Chong, A.Y.L. and Lin, B., 2013. Does TQM improve employees’ quality of work life? Empirical evidence from Malaysia’s manufacturing firms. Production Planning & Control, 24(1), pp.72-89.

Psomas, E.L., Pantouvakis, A. and Kafetzopoulos, D.P., 2013. The impact of ISO 9001 effectiveness on the performance of service companies. Managing Service Quality: An International Journal, 23(2), pp.149-164.

Ross, J.E., 2017. Total quality management: Text, cases, and readings. Routledge.

Scott, W.R., 2015. Organizations and organizing: Rational, natural and open systems perspectives. Routledge.

Zhu, Q., Cordeiro, J. and Sarkis, J., 2013. Institutional pressures, dynamic capabilities and environmental management systems: Investigating the ISO 9000–Environmental management system implementation linkage. Journal of environmental management, 114, pp.232-242.