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Melani Fletcher: University of Pretoria, Pretoria, South Africa
Introduction
The implementation of a service quality strategy is a multidimensional process reaching far beyond the principles that are being implemented. First, the organisation has to prepare for change, then identify and prioritise the required alterations. Furthermore, organisations also have to develop internal as well as external skills such as listening, effective communication and servant leadership to uphold the new service quality improvement strategy by building an effective team and, lastly, organisations have to control cost in order to contribute to the bottom-line of the organisation.
Although the importance of quality is well appreciated in the market, there seem to be major perception and implementation problems. The implementers of these strategies seem not to grasp the absolute importance of the people in the process and more specifically the importance of how they interact with each other in order to establish social networks that in turn increase productivity and profitability.
Berry, a highly respected author in the field of services, stated in an interview that service quality is a journey more of the heart than of things. Service quality is not necessarily improved by improving technology. Quality service is a function of leadership, good internal communications and team performance (Anonymous, 1988).
Literature review
Communication issues hampering service quality initiatives
Berry (Anonymous, 1988) used a journey metaphor to stress that quality service is not only a programme but should rather be seen as a never-ending journey. According to this guru, in the services industry an organisation will fail if it thinks of service quality as doing a little training or starting an incentive programme. The commitment has to be an obsession. It's a philosophy and a journey but never a mere programme (Anonymous, 1988). Crosby (1996) underlined Berry's opinion by stating that implementers are under the illusion that quality is caused by activities and programmes, such as benchmarking, empowerment and team building. He noted that organisations mistake activities for change and as a result cause very little change. The same viewpoint was uttered by Deming who stated this in the first of his 14 points in, "Adopt the new philosophy" (Carr and Tyson, 1992). This new philosophy proposes the concept to define quality as customer satisfaction. It also implies...