We went through the ‘quality revolution in the 70s/80s – now everyone (well all the big guys) has ISO 9000 and some have been through TQM programmes.
Why is it then that it is so difficult to get good’ service’. Service in the UK has largely been off-shored to India and other places – clearly as a cost-cutting exercise.
Customers hate calling these ‘service centres’ and playing ‘telephone tag’ until they eventually get someone who doesn’t understand the problem and has no authority to do anything about it.
They seem to have forgotten that ‘lean’ organisations start by valuing the voice of the customer (where voice is spelt VOice, not PRice).
So can we have a REAL quality revolution where quality and productivity (which should both be based on adding value) are considered two sides of the same coin and are not traded off against each other.