Why Quality in Service?

Service industries face a special challenge: Meeting customer needs while remaining economically competitive. While automated processes can make an impact, service industries are still labor-intensive, and there can be no substitute for high-quality personal interaction between service employees and customers.

Competitive advantage rests with those organizations that successfully provide customer value through the most efficient use of technology and people.

ASQ offers information and resources that help service organizations:

Understand and improve operational processes.
Identify problems quickly and systematically.
Establish valid and reliable service performance measures.
Measure customer satisfaction and other performance outcomes.

In Focus

How can you apply the quality tools traditionally used in manufacturing? Start by recognizing the differences between service and manufacturing processes. You may not have a physical product, but that doesn’t make it any less important to the customer.

ASQ President Elect Mike Nichols shares his thoughts on the challenges that service processes face in “Quality Tools in a Service Environment.” (PDF, 474 KB)

The next step is to determine what tools you should use when applying quality methodologies like Six Sigma to implement improvement. Learn more in Michael J. Fischer’s article on Six Sigma Tools for the Service Industry.