New Technical Service Model LO9142

Martin Wood (mwood@ukmkwt.cig.eds.com)
Thu, 15 Aug 1996 14:54:26 +0100

Replying to LO8812 --

I've been away on holiday, so I am still catching up with my mail. Ben's
original message (LO8812) discussed his view of the mismatch between his
'manufacturing model' and Novell's Groupware Technical Services
operations, and sought contributions from the list.

With the time lag, others have supplied comments that I could have made
(for example: Joanna Rothman's comparison with software development and
Joe Podolsky's suggestion to look at quality measures in other
service-type organisations). Hopefully, my contribution won't fall into
the 'me too' category of response, but add something to the conversation.

My suggestion for Ben is to think about how the service is delivered to
your customers, and what coping strategies you are going to put in place
to handle customers when things aren't going well. I've heard this
referred to as "service recovery". I'm aware of research at Avis
Rent-a-Car a couple of years ago that showed that customers still came
back if there had been a problem with their rental - providing that Avis
acknowledged the problem and fixed it satisfactorily. I recall that
customers who had problems fixed were stronger advocates for Avis that
those whose rental went smoothly !

Like Keith Cowan, I would recommend Eli Goldratt's "The Goal" as an
introduction to batch/production line manufacturing. As someone from a
service business background, it helped me understand that environment a
lot better. Ben's viewpoint represents, to me, one part of the
manufacturing continuum from the job shop/single project (e.g. plane
construction) to continuous process (e.g. oil refining). But I hear his
point that an understanding of manufacturing models is incidental to
handling the major issue of relevant quality metrics.

-- 
 
Martin Wood - Communications and Media Division, EDS UK
mwood@ukmkwt.cig.eds.com         Tel: +44 1908 284050
The views above are mine, and not necessarily those of EDS
 

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