The Service Quality/Solution

Service organizations face a formidable challenge in today's competitive marketplace: They must avoid repeating the failures and loss of market share experienced by some of America's manufacturing-based enterprises. Quality alone isn't the answer, nor are outmoded management approaches that fail to address the specific needs of service processes and service encounters. Finally, there's a viable solution. The Service/Quality Solution presents a clear framework for building competitive advantage and surviving the pressures within today's marketplace. Throughout this pioneering book, author David A. Collier demonstrates how to "think service managements," cultivate this service commitment within the work force, and add value to your company's products and services - thus distinguishing them from your competitors'. Enhanced with vignettes, diagrams, new service management terms, and 16 tools for effective service/quality management and analysis, The Service/Quality Solution is essential for any quality or service management library. This innovative resource helps you shift from a "product-producing" to a "service-providing" perspective so you can win and retain more customers; reveals how process performance can be "interlinked" to external performance measures such as customer satisfaction, so your company can adjust its improvement efforts and make them most effective; adds three new deadly diseases to Deming's Seven Deadly Diseases and shows how a forward-thinking service management approach can help overcome these deficiencies; and outlines approaches for designing and managing the types of service encounters that will position a company more competitively in any industry.