Chapter EIGHT. Designing Quality Services. Management Essay

Chapter Eight
Name
Institution
Chapter Eight
Chapter eight of the textbook titled Designing Quality Services looks into services offered by business organizations from a quality perspective. The main theme is to figure out the needs of customers and use that knowledge to come up with services that will satisfy them. Offering services is different from manufacturing products because it involves intangibles. The absence of hard measures means that statistical quality control strategies are not as successful in the services sector as they are in manufacturing. All in all, this is not to imply that statistical thinking is not of any use in services.
The chapter points out that high-quality service is crucial for competitiveness. However, service is a rather multidimensional term, just like quality. For a business organization to offer high-quality service, it has to have sufficient knowledge of customers’ wants, needs, and desires, together with an understanding of who the customer is. Offering quality service is not just meant to keep up with the competition, but also implies the business is mature in terms of quality. Even manufacturing companies eventually direct their efforts towards service in the course of the supply chain. In the modern economy, service is a major determinant of whether a firm stays ahead of the competition within the marketplace.
A commendable thing about the chapter is that it explains clearly the attributes of services and what differentiates them from manufacturing. While services are intangible, they also contain certain tangible aspects. For instance, the output of service is heterogeneous, meaning no two or more companies can produce the exact same service. Also, the provision and consumption of services often take place at the same time. A notable difference between services and manufacturing has to do with customer contact. Customers usually play a larger role in the production of services than they do in the manufacture of goods.
The difference between internal and external services, as well as between voluntary and involuntary services, is well explained in the chapter. An external service is one whose customer pays the bill while internal service is an in-house one, such as mail, printing, and data processing. Voluntary service is one that people actively seek and utilize on their own free will. Involuntary service is one that people are forced to utilize due to unavoidable circumstances, such as reporting a crime to the police.
Part of the chapter is dedicated to explaining how service quality issues differ from those of manufacturing. Since the attributes of service can be intangible, it becomes quite difficult to get hard data related to services. Manufactured products have dimensions such as weight and volume that can be measured. Conforming to these measures implies that the manufacturer has made a quality product. In the case of services, however, such measurable qualities are usually unavailable. Thus, many organizations that offer services and which utilize quality control charts have a hard time using them or use them the wrong way. All in all, this does not mean that control services hav...