Management Service Processes in a Specific Organization

¶ … Management Service Processes in a Specific Organization

Critical Evaluation of Effective Management Service Processes: Qantas Airlines

Effective and efficient management service processes are highly important when it comes to any organization that has dealings with the public in a service capacity. Addressed here will be the case and critical evaluation of Qantas airlines, which operates airplanes that shuttle individuals to vacation destinations and work-related conferences, among other needs. The paper will focus on three areas: the effective management of service processes, service people, and resource allocation. All three of these areas must be evaluated, in order to better understand the issues that the company faces. Additionally, all three areas generally work together to help an organization reach maximum efficiency and effectiveness. With that in mind, examining all three issues for Qantas will show how well the company is doing and whether there are things it could do to improve in the future, so it could better satisfy its customers.

Qantas is not immune to the difficulties that airlines and other service-oriented businesses face. One must consider all that Qantas goes through from a service and management perspective in order to remain relevant in the market and continue to make a profit. With that in mind, one consideration for Qantas would be a service marketing strategy plan. These kinds of plans are generally designed to provide a higher degree of success based on how resources are allocated, how customers are treated, and how employee perform their work (Easdown, 2006). Plans that address a company's service marketing strategy also focus on the specifics of the three main areas to be addressed. The following pages will consider how a plan of these type could be employed and used by Qantas, based on the areas in which the company is currently struggling. How Qantas allocates its current resources (and how it should be allocating them for maximum efficiency and effectiveness), as well as how it currently maintains and managers both its customers and its employees will all be discussed.

Service People

Among the main issues Qantas needs to address is customer loyalty and satisfaction. How best to do that, though, has to be examined from the standpoint of the processes that are undertaken in order to please both customers and employees. This is how service processes tie into the area of service people. For purposes of clarity and discussion, however, they will be kept separate here. Customer loyalty and customer satisfaction have to be earned, and one of the way in which they can be earned is through the correct treatment of those customers. This is vague, however, and must be clarified by any company that wants to be successful in a service-based industry. It is not possible to simply say that one will "treat customers well." How does the company propose to treat customers well? What is the given definition of "well" that the company will use? What will take place when the customer and the company differ on their opinions of proper treatment? There are many issues to consider, and service people are at the heart of all of them.

Handling service people correctly starts with leadership (Morrison & Winston, 1990; Kotlyar & Karakowsky, 2006; Bass & Avolio, 1994). For Qantas, the largest driving factor when it comes to satisfied customers is how those customers are treated, and they must be treated by service people in the way those service people have been taught to treat them by the leaders of the organization. In other words, the service people that are doing their jobs at Qantas are the driving force behind the company, and also the determining factor when it comes to how passengers actually feel about their experience with Qantas. Despite that, the service that they provide is not automatically understood when they come to work with the airline, so they must undergo training (a service process) that will allow them to be better prepared for what they will offer to the customers and what their job requires them to offer to the customer even if they disagree. Where service people are concerned, the adage that the customer is always right is still part of the equation.

With the exception of truly egregious issues, the service people must defer to the customer's "correct" interpretation of the issue. Only if leadership overrules this are service people to deny the customer the item or service for which he or she is asking. People are much more likely to return to a company where they were treated well (Velocci, 1995; Zerbe & Mumford, 1996). If the customers find a company that treats them correctly, they will come back to that company for their needs and wants again and again. For Qantas, treating customers properly should be the most important thing the company does. The only way to get (and keep) customers that have company loyalty is to be sure that they are happy with what one is offering and that they do not have a better offer from somewhere else (Wilcox, 1971). The proper treatment of customers by the service people has to be spelled out correctly, however, so that both service people and customers have a clear understanding of all of the rights and responsibilities that become theirs when they choose to do business with the company in any capacity.

As an airline, Qantas has a large number of competitors. There are many airlines that will be interested in going the "extra mile" for customers, but right now airlines are having trouble with the economy just like many other service businesses. Still, customer loyalty is considered to be the lifeblood of the airlines (Qantas, 2011). The company needs customers that have made the choice to fly with Qantas no matter what else is offered to them by other airlines and companies, because that is the type of loyalty that is required to increase and keep good profitability. In order to acquire and keep those customers, service people must follow established guidelines for customer treatment at all times. If they do not, they can find that they no longer have employment with that company. In order for service people to maintain the level of service required, however, they must remain pleased with what they are being offered in return for that service. The productivity of employees is also a vital part of any service organization - including Qantas.

This is largely due to the amount of interaction that is seen between customers and employees (Easdown, 2006). The workers in the terminal are seen by passengers, and there are also the flight attendants that are seen by passengers once they actually board the plane. There is interaction with the crew and the captain as the passengers get information about their upcoming flight. If employees on the flight and in the terminal are productive and helpful, customers are served quickly, their needs are met, and they have a good experience (Price Gundlach, 1995). Treating customers and employees correctly is a process, but it is the people who make that process possible and allow it to continue. Every employee has needs, and finding out what those needs are can help a service business meet those needs (Kotlyar & Karakowsky, 2006; Bass & Avolio, 1994). Meeting both employee and customer needs is part of the way a company can correctly handle service people and ensure that the part of their operation that requires human understanding and ability continues to run smoothly (Smith, Leimkuhler, & Darrow, 1992; Young, n.d.). A company is more than its people, however, and if the processes through which a customer must go to obtain what he or she needs do not function correctly, that customer is not likely to return.

Service Processes

Service processes are used by service people to ensure that a business provides a good experience for a customer. Understanding these processes is crucial, however, because a lack of understanding is often at the heart of communication breakdowns that occur inside any company (Easdown, 2006). Processes include the purchase and redemption of tickets, handing over and reclaiming baggage, and the actual boarding and disembarking of the airplane itself. Each one of these service processes requires more than most customers think about, but that is the goal - that the process is seamless to the customer, and he or she does not have to think about how it all works. Customers are not interested in what happens to their baggage once they hand it over to the ticket agent. They only want to know that it will arrive safely at their destination at the same time they arrive. Airlines that cannot provide this kind of experience to customers consistently have difficulties that relate to the service processes by which they operate their business. Those processes must be adjusted in order to correct the problem, but these adjustments can only come from an understanding of where the breakdown occurred and why the service process failed at that point.

In organizations that are involved with service, like the airline industry, the value comes from the experience customers have, as opposed to the product they receive (Morrison & Winston, 1990). In other words, people who fly want to have a safe flight on an airplane that is clean and where they are treated well, but they are not out to purchase the airplane. Ultimately, the way they are treated matters more than the product to which they are exposed. Both matter, certainly, but one has more significance than the other in the eyes of anyone who is a customer of a service business. The experience of flying is what Qantas customers are purchasing, whether they are flying for pleasure or for business. A safe, comfortable trip with the luxuries they expect is what flyers want and need. Most will be flying coach, but the seats should still be comfortable and the price should be reasonable. The service processes that are implemented at the company have to remain consistent, but in order to get ahead these processes will also need to be stronger and better than the processes at other airlines.

The service people and service processes must work together, for if they do not there is much more of a chance of a breakdown between the customer's purchase of a ticket and the customer's arrival (with baggage intact) at the gate of his or her selected destination. There are many steps and processes in the provision of service to customers, and the customers should not see the steps. They should only see the process. In order to make that happen, however, the service business must properly train its people and streamline the processes in which those people will be trained, so that the customer experience is a pleasant one. The streamlining of service processes is a strong consideration for any service-based company or industry (Easdown, 2006). With the arrival of TQM (total quality management) and lean Six Sigma objectives, companies were forced to take a careful look at not just the effectiveness but the efficiency of their processes.

A service process that is appropriate for the company and the customer must be both efficient and effective, but many companies fail to realize how much further they could pare down their processes and still provide high quality service to the customer. When companies avoid working with strategies like Six Sigma, they miss out on crucial areas in which they could save money, reduce waste, and lower their human resource cost, all while still offering the customer the quality he or she has come to expect. Companies that are highly successful are operating in a way that is very lean, because they understand the value of streamlined and efficient service processes.

Resource Allocation

Allocating resources can be difficult, especially if a company is not in the black or there is a downturn in the economy or in that company's industry. One of the most significant areas where resources need to be allocated is advertising. Word of mouth advertising can be highly positive for any service business that performs well, but businesses that cause a high level of problems for customers will often find that their business is harmed because those dissatisfied customers are much more likely to talk to other people about their bad experiences than they are to talk to the business and see if something can be resolved. Organizations that have productive, helpful employees that are focused on customer service will see value in those employees and in the advertising they get from customers who tell others about the great experiences they have had with the company (Price Gundlach, 1995). Because this has been shown to be the case for virtually every business in existence, Qantas needs to carefully focus its efforts on having employees that are satisfied, as that leads to customers who are also satisfied (Easdown, 2006). Many companies do not realize how much this correlation matters until it is too late to make corrections.

There is a process to allocating resources, however, just as there is a process to providing good service. Resources can (and should) be allocated in a way that makes economic sense, both from an efficiency and effectiveness standpoint (Easdown, 2006). The availability of those resources matters, as does the time that will be taken to complete the project, who will be using the resources, and in what capacity those resources will be used. In other words, there are many different factors that must be addressed when it comes to the allocation of resources - and resources can also include human resources (i.e. employees) - which often further complicates the allocation.

The airline industry generally has a low turnover rate, which is beneficial to resource allocation. By keeping the turnover rate very low, airlines such as Qantas have a better idea of the available human resources they will have on hand on any given day, as well as the quality of those resources (time with the company, time in the industry, work ethic, training, etc.).

In the current economic climate that low turnover rate and better allocation of resources is especially important, for two reasons. Airlines do not want to spend money hiring and training new people, because it is very expensive to do so. Additionally, people are very serious about keeping their jobs today, because of concerns about the economy. The lower the rate of turnover, the better the chance the airline will see a profit, and the better chance that same airline will be able to provide satisfied employees that have been properly trained and perform their jobs correctly (Easdown, 2006). Every employee at a service business goes through a training period before they are released to work with customers, but that does not mean that employee knows all he or she can about the company and about proper customer service. Those kinds of things take time, and there is a depth of knowledge that only comes with employees that work with a company for a long period of time. Low turnover rates help with that, and the human resource aspect becomes one part of resource allocation with which the airlines does not have problems or struggle.

A low rate of turnover also shows that employees are satisfied with their jobs, and when they have job satisfaction they are more likely to do their jobs well. They will learn more, and when they see processes that are ineffective and areas where resources are not allocated correctly, they will be more likely to speak up and be part of the team that is working to make sure ideas like lean Six Sigma and TQM are not just being used, but being used both correctly and consistently. Enjoying one's work is not something everyone has the opportunity for, but many people like what they do. Studies have found that people who like what they do are better at doing it than people who do not enjoy their jobs (Bryant, 2003). While both people may be just as competent when it comes to doing a job, the one who enjoys his or her job will still perform better because the passion and enjoyment of that job is something that can be seen in the work ethic and the employee's performance. That performance translates into how customers feel about their experience with the company, as well, and happy employees are much more likely to have happy customers who feel they have been treated properly. This is one of the ways in which service people, service processes, and resource allocation are all tied together and all work together for the customer experience.