It is very common to indicate that an organization must have quality processes that allow it to obtain products and services that satisfy its customers. This quality not only has to be in your processes and must be reviewed, measured and controlled periodically. However, the question we want to ask ourselves on this occasion is who needs to control their quality more, production companies or service companies?
This question is key, since Today a large part of the economy and the most competitive companies are services (not production). Until a few decades ago, the most important, listed and profitable companies were those linked to the world of production: energy, mass manufacturing, extraction, etc. Today, if one analyzes the ranking of the most profitable companies in the world, we find that, among the 10 first, 8 are services; Production companies have been largely relegated to other positions.
Although historically quality control practices, as we have said, have been more related to the companies that make products; Indeed, these companies, in the pursuit of standardization, were almost forced to follow rigorous quality control procedures. Unlike these, the service companies they still have little standardized, widespread and efficient quality control procedures, above all in the relationship with your clients.
Therefore, on this occasion we want to make a review of the nature of services and their need to be controlled.
Characteristics of service companies
- Let us begin; first of all, services are intangible What does this mean? that the services cannot be touched or felt; Although some dimensions of these are related to the sensitive, services in general have intangibility – unlike companies that make products, which are tangible and related to the sensitive, which may be easier for them to cause a good impression. impression on the client.
- Let's take the service in an airline as an example; Outside of the comfort of the plane, in some aspects of meals and seats on the aircraft, almost everything else is intangible: the friendliness of the stewardess, punctuality, responsiveness to customer concerns, etc. On the contrary, if I buy a Swiss watch its tangibility will be permanent, every time I see it, feel it on my wrist and appreciate the perception of its mechanism; Thus, the watch manufacturer has more possibilities to impress the customer.
- In second place, services cannot be separated at the time they are given from the client, while the products do. While the service is provided, the staff providing it is in contact almost permanently, with different intensity and duration, but this contact occurs almost throughout the service. A production company may be manufacturing the watch in a closed area and without any contact with the customer, that is, the customer does not participate in the production part, while in the services they do. This makes services are inseparable from the client during the process.
- In third place, services are variable while in production variability can be much more controlled. If I calibrate my machinery well for the production of watches, it is likely that it will have minimal variations, almost imperceptible to the human eye. There will always be variation in the services since they are provided by Humans, that we cannot standardize nor our spirit, our excitement and enthusiasm for serving the client. Services vary much more than products.
- Services are perishableNormally a service will last a while for the client, even knowing that there are services that can be provided for life, in general going to an airline, being in a restaurant or attending a theater performance will have a beginning and an end, of so that later, in time, I will only be left with the memory of that service and I will not have permanently on my wrist that watch that I bought and that could last my entire life. Services are forgotten over time, while products are intended to last, to be imperishable.
- Finally, the appreciation of services will always be subjective and will be related to the experience of each client, such as the moment they receive the service and whether or not their needs are immediately satisfied. The products, for their part, although they can be appreciated subjectively, will always be framed within characteristics that can be measured objectively: size, weight, color, hardness, texture, etc.
With these characteristics, it would seem logical that the service industry would carry out greater quality controls; However, when we look at the world of quality control, we see that they are still production companies carry out these controls the most (having advantages regarding services, they are precisely the ones that deal most with this aspect).
For this reason, we believe that Service companies must give much more importance to quality control in processes related to clients.. These must be permanently evaluated due to variability, intangibility and their nature of not being able to be separated from the client while being provided.
Companies that carry out these processes in a serious, systematic and profound manner will obtain the competitive advantage in the world of services. For this reason, I often recommend that organizations learn from production companies in terms of quality control and act as if what we provide are products on which the lives of our customers depend. If we do this, excellence in customer service can be achieved and will not remain an empty statement of content and purpose.
