R. Gopalakrishnan, Director, Tata Sons Limited
In the world of business and management, when considering subjects like quality and productivity, most people relate easily to products and less comfortably with services. The research literature, the pedagogy and the discourse are loaded in that way because that is the sequence in which manufacturing and services evolved. During the last two centuries, it was manufacturing that first displaced agriculture in the GDP basket. But during the last fifty years, as services have progressively displaced manufacturing in the GDP basket, the discourse has not quite changed in favour of services to the required extent.
Looked at in this perspective, Gopal Gureja’s well-researched book is well-timed as much as it is well-intentioned. He bemoans the striking gap between intent and execution when it comes to Customer Service Quality—and he is not referring to the situation in unknown, fly-by-night companies.
His research is based on experiences with solid, blue chip, and iconic companies. Customers do experience the service quality of lesser companies too, but it is not correct to assume that smaller companies will deliver less service quality. They just may do better! The problem could well be one of focus.
A.G. Lafley, the former CEO of Proctor and Gamble, became famous for re-orienting his massive company towards greater innovation. He dinned the slogan, “The customer is God”, into the entire management. CEOs are known to call upon their employees with such messages periodically, each such call being genuinely intended to strengthen the company: cut costs, improve margins, launch premium products and so on. GopalGureja points out that every such exhortation re-orients the management, but often along different axes. Each employee adopts his or her own trajectory, neither the X-axis nor the Y-axis, but the 30, 45 or 60 degree axis that best suits his or her understanding–and there are several hundred, if not thousands of employees. The result is confusion or haziness in the aggregate mind-set of the employees. He also correctly points out the vital role of employee engagement and emotional involvement!
How big is the gap? Why does the gap exist? What does it take to deliver to the customer what the intent is? These questions have been addressed comprehensively by the author.
When Henry Ford got the idea of taking the work to the man rather than the man to the work, he launched a new wave of productivity. But that could work only if standardization was achieved. In the history of manufacturing quality, we all know the crucial role played by developing concepts such as standardization, process-orientation and reliability engineering. These same principles do have a relevance to the issue of service quality and indeed technology and automation provide help. There is, however, one big difference.
Because of the preponderance of the human element, it is difficult to work in the service industry with the degree of analytics and process as you use in the manufacturing industry. The author provides examples of the wooden customer service experience when the front-line employee knows how to resolve a customer problem, but he cannot do it. Instead of helping to deliver superior customer experience, technology ties down the service provider.
In his book Demand: creating what people love, Adrian Slywotzky argues that Magic equals Functionalitymultiplied By Emotion. Magic refers to the quality of experience delivered by the product or service,Functionality to what the rational experience is and Emotion to what the emotional experience is. In a service business, clearly the emotional high in service delivery gives a positive experience as much as a low can negatively influence the service experience.
Gopal Gureja’s research has been with real companies, and done among real people. His case studies are the stuff of which your company and my company are made, every day with so many customers. He does not lament the situation, but offers his suggestions about what leaders can do about it. He has some important messages.