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Communicating service quality improvement: Another role for public relations
Public Relations MN:
Review, 20( 1):27-39
0363-8111
Robert L. Heath, Steven A. Lctb, and Katby Nathan
Copyright
0 1994 by JAI Press Inc.
All rights ofrcpmduction
in any form reserved.
communicating Service Quality Improvement: Another Role for Public Relations ABSTRACT: Public relations practitioners have struggled to become part of total quality management (TQM) teams in an era when companies have focused enormous effort on enhancing service quality as a competitive edge. TQM is a challenge to practitioners whose mentality and training leads them to focus on process instead of measurable outcomes and who are better prepared to defend the status quo than to abandon it for greener quality service pastures. This article combines public relations practice and TQM improvement stages to create a philosophy and set of strategies to assist practitioners’ understanding of the challenges and response
options available to them as part of improving service quality. Robert L. Heath is a professor and director of the Institute for the Study of Issues Management at the University of Houston. Steven A. Leth is a principal of The Institute, and Kathy Nathan works in Creative Marketing Services.
Achievement of a sound, lasting relationship with customers is no minor undertaking, Today, it is the goal sought enthusiastically by savvy management cadres. For that reason, public relations professionals are challenged to be valuable partners in the Total Quality Management (TQM) effort. TQM calls for PR professionals to rethink how to strengthen their support of management,
Spring 1994
29
Public
Relations
Reaimv
employees, and external audiences. Communication specialists are expected to respond to the needs of managers and employees to be informed of and motivated to implement changes that enhance quality. External stakeholders include clients (current and potential), stockholders of publicly traded companies, and key members of the public. Messages can increase constituents’ awareness of quality efforts and convince them that they are beneficial. Senice quality expects managers, supervisors, and employees to focus on resultswhat is accomplished-by improving process-what is done. This philosophy can be daunting for practitioners who are process oriented. Indeed, awards given to honor the design and execution of public relations campaigns can reinforce a process rather than outcome mentality. Awards often emphasize what a campaign is-what practitioners do-rather than what it achieves. Many people in public relations exacerbate this problem by voicing the timeless self-defense: “You can’t measure what we do.” Because it flies in the face of service management improvement, that philosophy demands reflection on the practice of public relations. The current broadbased commitment to quality poses at least two challenges to PR specialists-whether in companies or agencies. The first challenge is to be part of the management cadre which devises and implements an organizational culture committed to service quality. Communication professionals need to understand and support the principles, goals and strategies that underpin service management and support employees’ awareness of and commitment to excellence (Grunig, 1992, especially chapter 9). As Bahls (1992) advised, “Public relations professionals, whether working inside or outside the company, would do well to understand the principles of TQM. And rather than merely promoting the new standards, the need to be able to help the company meet them.” (p. 16.) Stressing the advantages gained at Dow Chemical USA, Susan Walton (1993) proclaimed that a communication specialist was a fir11voting member of the Quality Steering Team from its formation. The second challenge requires special efforts to help measure and document the quality improvement effort and to report its effects to properly targeted external audiences. Practitioners can advance the service management effort by reporting evidence of quality improvement in messages positioned to reach external audiences and convince them that the company is seriously committed to quality. “The traditional corporate communication style is to always be positive. But quality improvement requires [also) talking about things that go wrong, mistakes, and painful truths” (Quimby, Parker, & Weimerskirch, 1991, p. 54). To strengthen the performance of public relations in support of service quality, this article proposes a philosophy for communicating TQM and discusses stages to follow. If, as many believe, culture is a foundation for quality improvement, practitioners should reinforce what is best about their organization’s culture and help correct aspects that are obstacles to quality improvement. Along with the search for dramatic breakthroughs, the focus should be on constant, incremental improvement targeted to achieve well defined results. To meet the TQM challenge, public relations has to abandon glittering generalities and avoid routine publicity stunts. Approaches and tactics are required to foster a culture that empowers employees, informs them of achievable quality goals, and 30
Vol. 20, No. 1
Communicating Service @al@
Improvement: Another Rokfor Public Rehtions
gains their compliance to increase quality. From inception of the improvement effort, PR should examine customer-client relationships, to increase the likelihood that stories about success and failure of service improvement efforts reach all parts of the organization, to promote strategies that foster quality, and to assess their impact. By exerting their expertise, PR practitioners can increase the speed and quality of messages working their way throughout an organization. Public relations practitioners should not underestimate employees’ need to understand what service quality is- as expected by management and customers. Whereas “the absence of variation” is the hallmark of TQM efforts in the manufacturing and assembly sectors (Port, 1991, p.8), the theme of the service sector should be variation as needed to meet customer expectations and increase satisfaction, a principle that can underpin PR’s response to quality service. A recent ad by Marriott exemplifies this variation; it reported that a desk clerk offered his personal cuff links to a guest who had neglected to pack his and needed them to be properly attired for a meeting. Service is quality when it delights customers. Variation as needed requires that persons strategically deliver predictable and standardized service while being capable of varying the service to satisfy or exceed customer expectations (Zeithaml, 1990).
CHALLENGES AND RESPONSES IMPROVEMENT STAGES: STRATEGY, STRUCTURE AND
IN THREE TACTICS
Three stages typical of successful service management efforts can serve as focal points for implementing desired changes (Leth, 1990). Communication specialists may perform unique roles at each stage of the effort to establish, improve, and proudly proclaim service quality. Stage One: Direction
Setting
and Planning
In stage one, the organization is reconceptualized with the goal of generating changes that enhance quality. Management and key personnel develop and implement plans designed to increase customer satisfaction. This stage features innovative foresight, consideration of capital expenditure, obtainable outcomes, improvement measures, and proactive organizational change strategies (Leth, 1990). To be part of this team, PR needs to determine what can be said and to whom to achieve and reinforce employee and management efforts to make personal and organizational changes. Public relations expertise is needed to decide which messages foster change and to determine which improvements should be announced to stakeholders. Challenges Service improvement challenges management and personnel to refine procedures and policies with the objective of pleasing each customer. Throughout the organizaspring 1994
31
Public Relations Review
tion, planning efforts should link quality to strategic objectives and day-to-day activities. Efforts are needed to coordinate operations and customer contact. During planning, public relations has the opportunity to demonstrate an embracing scope of the company and strong sensitivity to customer satisfaction. The quality criteria used in the Malcolm Baldridge Award assessment process (customer satisfaction, leadership, information, planning, human resources, quality assurance, and results) can be featured in the strategic planning specific to public relations (Skutski, 1992). Vital to this stage is identifying audiences which need service improvement messages and deciding how to reach them in ways that maximize reception, understanding, and motivation. Working with marketing and sales to ascertain “return on service,” public relations should advise management of obstacles to achieving change and recommend how communication can be used to overcome them. From the outset, PR should strive to ensure that service quality promises made by marketing and advertising do not fall short of customers’ sense of the actual quality of service received. l
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Planning to develop the %nternal customer” concept-the rationale and value for improved internal services. Planning is used to discover ways to increase organizational members’ sensitivity to the needs of each other as customers and awareness of how to meet those needs. In that sense, each function and unit inside the organization is an “internal customer” which deserves to be served by public relations. By exemplifying a service commitment to its own internal customers, public relations can encourage other employees to serve one another as internal customers. An internal customer service orientation guides public relations’ efforts to obtain and convey information that its audiences need to understand and appreciate quality improvement. The planning process should develop themes and assure that they are communicated repeatedly, consistently, and coherently in the full array of messages used to support excellence. The objective of PR planning is to help managers, employees, and customers live the company’s quality vision. That vision and the efforts to accomplish it must be real, not the manufacture of skilled writers and electronic media producers. Planning to disseminate the service quality improvement strategy and specific service features to be targeted. Public relations personnel must understand concepts and principles unique to quality improvement strategies; these need to be expressed in a vocabulary employees can understand and enact. Quality needs to be translated into terms customers understand, so that they know what service to expect. At the very outset and throughout the process, the features of service management must be communicated candidly and honestly, to convey executive management’s commitment to achieve measurable outcomes rather than to merely rely on hollow slogans instead of making meaningful changes. One mistake that public relations makes is communicating messages management and quality guidance teams want Vol. 20, No. 1
Communicating
Service @al@
Improvement: Another Ro&for Public Relations
conveyed rather than ascertaining what members of the organization and external customers want to learn about the process. Public relations needs to avoid using traditional publicity efforts that make quality improvement a circus; employees have seen publicity events used to promote management programs before and respond negatively to messages that lack substance and do not convey a documented commitment to meaningful change. Public relations should plan to use examples and statistical analysis to demonstrate how the vision is becoming manifest through individual and collective efforts. Public relations can assure that employees are aware of service quality claims made to customers through advertisements (Berry, 1981). These claims serve to define the level of service quality managers and customers expect. l
Planning to acquire customer service-related data needed to compare customers’ expectations with their perceived quality of business unit activities. PRpractitioners can assist the design and execution ofresearch efforts-especially surveys, in-depth interviews, and focus groups-to ascertain customers’ expectations and measure the extent to which service provided satisfies their expectations. Quality public relations is able to ascertain and narrow the gap between what customers expect and what they receive from organizations and their subunits. As Zeithaml(l990) cautioned, “ a major cause of dissatisfaction is the gap between what a firm promises about a service and what it actually delivers” (p. 369). Expertise is needed to narrow that gap (a) by ascertaining the criteria customers use to assess service quality, (b) advising that service be altered to meet the criteria, (c) creating criteria that would lead to greater satisfaction, (d) telling customers how service is improving, and (e) giving customers the means to comment on the service they receive. The following criteria are important to TQM assessment: timeliness, relevance and accuracy of information; candid presentation of information; and messages expressing technical advice key audiences can use to achieve rewards and avoid negative consequences.
Responses In response to service improvement challenges, public relations should plan to communicate constantly and with variety, to establish themes appropriate to total quality improvement, and to provide needed information on demand. During the planning process, public relations can encourage and assist other departments’ understanding of how they can work with one another to increase the understanding of and commitment to quality service improvement. l
Integrating proactive communication strategies into an overall plan for service quality improvement. Communication efforts need to be thor-
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ough, consistent, accurate, insightful, thematic; unified, candid, interesting, and timely. One key communication tactic is to show respect for people and their work, to assure employees that they make a difference. One quality response of public relations is to feature relationship development and team building as expressions of organization culture. In its planning, public relations should think less of service improvement as a short-term campaign and more as a longrange commitment to achieve measurable outcomes. l
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Utilizing data collection mechanisms to ascertain service and customer requirements (a concern that may not reside in marketing). Data from internal and external customers can assist public relations’ ongoing efforts to perform situational analysis. The key to effective data collection is to ascertain which information can make a difference and to obtain it from people who make a difference. This information should be interpreted and used in a form that does not compromise its integrity to truly improve service quality. As public relations works to establish benchmarks to quantity quality improvement, it must not ignore the indicators needed to assess its own success in assisting management and employees to understand, accept, and implement quality improvement. In this way, public relations holds itself accountable. Implement interactive communication forums for achieving workforce awareness and buy-in. Two-way communication is preferable because it increases the likelihood that the best information will be acquired and employed during creation and implementation of service management. It increases empowerment by demonstrating to people that their opinions make a difference. An important communication outcome is to keep managers and employees aware and focused on anticipating improvements and planning ahead. As new goals are developed and old ones accomplished or refined, PR can provide that information to key employees along with rational for changes, successes, and failures. PR personnel can plan to participate in the vital process of opening communication by designing and facilitating forums that promote dialogue to create awareness and commitment. Stage Two:
Service Team
Improvement
This stage revolves around defining and empowering quality teams; it requires that service principles be integrated into all that is done in behalf of satisfying customers. One obvious challenge to public relations is to be an effective team as well as an effective partner to other teams. The challenge entails providing information that help teams to understand service management, to augment and reinforce their commitment to it, and to motivate efforts that enhance the team
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Communicating Service Quality Improvement: Another Role for Public Relations
process as well as the ability and willingness to service customers more effectively. To foster and reinforce team efforts requires a culture that stresses customer satisfaction. Monitoring is needed to lessen organization members’ incentives to blame service quality failures on one another or on other groups. The team concept assumes that obstacles to improved quality must be removed and replaced with shared responsibileverything requires ity and commitment. As Bahls (1992) reasoned, “Coordinating a great deal of communication” (p.18). Public relations can help mediate and facilitate the flow of information and influence between key parties. Challenges Management cannot increase quality by issuing directives, but by participating with employees to idemil+ and meet challenges. Middle managers benefit from developing or reinforcing the attitude that employees’ needs for information and involvement in service-related decisions should be met. Learning that their efforts make a difference increases the likelihood that employees acquire a sense of control over their activities and trust other members to perform activities that result in customer satisfaction. In that way, employee empowerment increases. l
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Increasing awareness and educating the workfoorce-particular(y middle managersin the ways that quality is implemented in support of service and integrated into team efitis. Communication is needed to help employees understand the necessity of change and to acquire the attitudes and skills needed to achieve it and cope with it. Interdependency is vital to service improvement; public relations can help employees to see units, functions, and efforts as integrated. Sharing improvement “bbreaktbroughs” in service throtlghout each business unit and organization. PR should be part of the continual effort to overcome resistance to change by featuring progress in quality improvement; this information needs to reach and impress internal and external audiences. Organizational stories shared through conversations are routinely used by individual employees to acquire insights into organizational culture. Public relations can increase the likelihood that employees learn organizational success stories that feature breakthroughs and report the rewards achieved by the organization, key units, or individuals who accomplished that success. A recurring theme of failed service improvement efforts is that management did not empower employees because they were not allowed to carry through their efforts to increase quality; PR can advance the process by seeking and disseminating success stories. “One way practitioners can contribute to TQM is by anticipating and defusing employee resistance” (Bahls, 1992, p. 18). Empowerment results when employees are given authority, within guidelines they have helped to establish, to sat+ customer needs, even in ways that vary from the norm. People
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Public Relations Review
are empowered when they are rewarded for making necessary changes and solving problems. Employees need to be trained to solve problems. Empowerment is magnified when they obtain information that their efforts make a difference in how the organization achieves its goals. Public relations can obtain and disseminate such information. Improvement efforts are likely to have more impact to the extent that they are personalized; public relations can demonstrate that real people are making real difference. l
Maintaining senior manager leadership and visibility as the improvement effort unfolds. A key public relations tactic is to convey the message that management prizes all innovation which enhances service quality. Such messages can create the culture that reminds management that two-way communication enhances efforts to increase quality and coaches them on ways to work with employees to enhance customer satisfaction. Employees need to be aware that managers are using quality tools and concepts to improve their own work and are making a hands-on effort to work with employees to increase service quality. Success stories and personal statements can demonstrate that management is aware of the difficulties of achieving quality improvement and is willing to assist in overcoming obstacles.
Responses The response to these challenges is to employ communication strategies that make quality improvement real, tangible, and rewardable. PR should obtain information regarding quality improvement, synthesize it, and present it to key audiences. l
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Coordinating data collection fi-om customers and consulting on data collection tools. The key is to be constantly vigilant for indicators of customer satisfaction that are performance driven and measurable. Public relations practitioners are expected to use data collection techniques such as surveys, interviews, focus groups, audits, quality circles, and problem-solving planning sessions. Public relations personnel should establish scanning and monitoring procedures and assist in developing measures to assess internal and external customer expectations of quality and determine whether those expectations are met. Public relations enhances service management by being accessible to employees by obtaining and providing information they believe is useful. E-mail systems and computerized bulletin boards are vehicles which PR can utilize. Rather than thinking of themselves as the exclusive communication unit of the organization, public relations can encourage employees to become creative partners. They can be trained to help public relations acquire and disseminate information. One strategy is to encourage them to seek and present success stories in
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Communicating Service Q&ity Improvement: Another Role for Public Relations
their own words; they should also look for missed opportunities and failures of managers or supervisors to keep the faith to enhance service. This information has more impact if it is presented candidly. People involved in service quality efforts need to help determine the measures and means for data collection that will tell them whether they are achieving quality objectives. Public relations can help identifjr core customers of the organization. l
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Using print and video media to report on the progress of the service management efirt and maintain its visibility An organization should use a variety of media to explain to its people that quality is important to management and to customers; use of the media and message design should promote the organizational persona of quality service. Public relations can train managers and employees to be effective communicators and supply technical support for their efforts to prepare and deliver messages. Such efforts foster the team spirit by empowering employees to help one another. Public relations should position messages where they increase the likelihood of being received and present them in a manner that makes them enticing and motivating. Coaching and &ding senior managers on theirroles in creating and disseminating public messages. These persons deserve assistance in designing and disseminating messages that impress on internal audiences the innovations used to achieve quality. Senior managers need to reach external audiences with messages that report the impact these innovations have on service quality. Public relations can look for and prepare managers to take advantage of occasions at which to describe quality improvement achievements. Stage Three:
Service Quality Integration
All units need to view themselves as integrated into a coherent and encompassing partnership for quality improvement. Communication efforts can help organizational members understand and focus on achievable goals as well as commit to systems that enhance service quality. Individual units should not lose sight of the fact that their commitment to customer satisfaction must integrate with that of other units. Commitment to service quality should be integrated into all that managers and employees do. Because it views the organization as a single entity needing a sense of integrated commitment, PR is a cornerstone to this integration. At this stage, efforts should be made to integrate quality into systems and processes that support quality. The target of this stage includes reaching into departments to communicate the importance of selecting, hiring, and training people to be vital members of the service team. At this stage, customers, suppliers, and investors should receive messages that demonstrate the company’s progress toward improved quality.
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Challenges The challenge at this stage is to discover ways to supply managers and employees with information and guidance they need to see how quality can be integrated into activities of individuals and departments whose efforts interlock in ways that are designed to meet customer expectations. For instance, operations personnel must understand and support the requirements of persons who have direct customer contact. Of special importance are procedures and guidelines employees need regarding how to coordinate efforts to achieve good customer service; this information should help them understand how and when to vary service to satisfjr special requirements and thereby to maximize customer satisfaction. Employees should be encouraged to be alert to opportunities to serve customers in ways that exceed their expectations. l
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Assisting the workforce in understanding qstem refinements which support quality. As systems are refined to achieve customer satisfaction, managers and employees need to obtain that information as quickly as possible in ways that make it official. Public relations can alert audiences to information and assure them that it is policy. PR can listen to employees to learn how to tailor messages that address their specific needs in terms that are meaningful. Departments and unit messages need to be fitted into the “big” picture of quality improvement. One key challenge of a quality communication plan is to design and coordinate messages so that managers and employees understand the total commitment to service quality and know their role in meeting it. Designing and helping to implement communication forums and practices in support of quality in day-to-day operations. A key challenge of a quality service program is to keep the message alive-to update, refine, and communicate basic themes. PR is an excellent organizational position to advocate and operationalize the principle that decisions must be made in concert. It can foster a culture based on two-way communications-openness, supportiveness, candor, and interdependence. To keep efforts vital requires forums and other communication vehicles that give managers means to share messages directly with employees and allow them to respond to those messages. Such processes increase the likelihood that messages are understood and reflect the reality of what employees need to serve customers. Posturing the effort and progress with customers and other external stakeholders. The challenge is to develop lasting harmony between organizational units and their customers. If customers do not learn about new and continuing efforts to improve service, the effort can fail. Customers must know about improvements in quality. If the company is publicly traded, investors need to learn about the impact service management has on profits and competitiveness. The degree to which such messages are believable and persuasive depends on the reputation Vol. 20, No. 1
Communicating
Service Quality Improsement: Another Role for Public Relations
the company has for being committed to good customer service. If a company lacks a record of service excellence, proof to the contrary requires vigorous documentation and sustained presentation of progress. Audiences require proof that the company knows how to achieve quality and is committed to it. The persuasiveness of such messages results from reports of business reasons to justify how the company can operate effectively to achieve quality. Responses Audiences-internal and external-are skeptical about claims companies make about improved service. Those messages decay if they are not repeated and do not contain evidence that quality is integrated into day-to-day activities. l
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Highlighting service features in marketing, promotional and publicity materials. Messages to internal and external audiences require carefully presented themes and details to report quality improvements and announce new commitments. Such messages can feature subtle changes in operations and systems that meet or exceed customer expectations. Messages are strongest when they are integrated into all internal and external communication vehicles related to product, service, and image publicity, as well as investor relations statements for publicly traded companies. Developing communication practices in conjunction with managers and supervisors to support continuous improvement. The key is to increase the likelihood that service innovations become known to key audiences who can take advantage of them. Public relations personnel only learn of innovations and quality breakthroughs by being open to personnel at the department or unit levels. Information needed to design messages is easier to gather when management, public relations, and employees are interdependent. Public relations can dispel the notion that service improvement is the latest fad by demonstrating the organization’s commitment to change; reports of action speak louder than words captured as campaign slogans. Professional expertise can assist managers and employees to create messages and use media to communicate quality improvement messages in their own words. Providing skills training to ensure continued eflectiveness in information
sharing and customer relations. Supervisor and employee training should provide statements that can be used to present service in appropriate ways to customers and to seek responses about their satisfaction with the service. These comments can be used to assess how well customers believe the company is achieving its quality goals and to ascertain what customers expect from the service it receives. Supervisors and employees need to adopt quality communication styles characterized by trust, spring 1994
39
Public
Relations Review
openness, candor, and two-way flow of information. Part of PR’s responsibility is to build bridges between people inside the organization and between units and their customers; bridges need to replace walls. Using internal communication, public relations can supply all employees with guidelines and scripts needed to increase customer satisfaction. Employees need to know that their efforts make a difference. They should adopt a team spirit that challenges them to strive for higher levels of service because they know that is what others expect of them-and they need reassurance that they can expect other employees and supervisors to strive for increased quality.
CAVEATS
AND
CONCLUSIONS
Differentiate between results-oriented and process-oriented service management efforts; use the latter to achieve the former. Determine which changes make a difference, achieve them, and measure them. Benchmark to quantity IX’s impact on the process. Empower employees by demonstrating that their efforts make a difference in achieving quality, and thereby provide continuity for the quality effort. Help management and employees move from occasional to continual customer satisfaction. Practitioners are often trained to justify the status quo-as being OK. TQM challenges them to strategically create dissatisfaction with the status quo, to motivate constructive change, and to provide information to guide it. In the midst of helping members of the company to improve their performance, PR personnel is given opportunities to reinvent itself. It can increase its own quality and demonstrate its value to management, employees, and customers as it maintains visibility for quality service. No segment of a company is more capable of creating excitement for quality improvement than is public relations.
REFERENCES Bahls, J.E.
(1992) “Managing for Total Quality: Practitioners Must Inspire Employee Involvement.” Public Relations Journal, (April): 16-20. Berry, L.L. (1981). “The Employee as Customer.” Journal ofRetail Banking 3(3): 33-40. Gnmig, J.E. (Ed.). (1992). Excellence in Public Relationsand Communication Management. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Quimby, C., Parker, L., & Weimerskirch, A.M. (1991). “How, Exactly, Do You Communicate Quality?” Quality Proflress, 24(6): 52-54. Leth, S.A. (1990). “The Five Best Practices of Service Leadership.” National Productivity Review, 9(2): 201-212. Port, 0. (1991). “Questing for the Best.” Bwitiess Week, October 25, pp. 8-15. Skutski, K (1992). me 10 most effective communication strategies. Presented at the
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Service Quality Improvement:
Another Rolefor
Public Relations
Communicating Quality Symposium, sponsored by American Productivity & Quality Center and International Association of Business Communicators, March 10-12, 1992. Walton, S. (1993). “A Teamwork Approach to Quality Communications.” Continuous Jouivzey, l(3): 10-11. Zeithaml, V.A. (1990). “Communicating with Customers about Service Quality.” Pp. 369383 in D. E. Bowen, R B. Chase, T. G. Cummings & Associates (Eds.) Service Management Efictiaeness San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass Publishers.
Spring 1994
41
Review, 20( 1):27-39
0363-8111
Robert L. Heath, Steven A. Lctb, and Katby Nathan
Copyright
0 1994 by JAI Press Inc.
All rights ofrcpmduction
in any form reserved.
communicating Service Quality Improvement: Another Role for Public Relations ABSTRACT: Public relations practitioners have struggled to become part of total quality management (TQM) teams in an era when companies have focused enormous effort on enhancing service quality as a competitive edge. TQM is a challenge to practitioners whose mentality and training leads them to focus on process instead of measurable outcomes and who are better prepared to defend the status quo than to abandon it for greener quality service pastures. This article combines public relations practice and TQM improvement stages to create a philosophy and set of strategies to assist practitioners’ understanding of the challenges and response
options available to them as part of improving service quality. Robert L. Heath is a professor and director of the Institute for the Study of Issues Management at the University of Houston. Steven A. Leth is a principal of The Institute, and Kathy Nathan works in Creative Marketing Services.
Achievement of a sound, lasting relationship with customers is no minor undertaking, Today, it is the goal sought enthusiastically by savvy management cadres. For that reason, public relations professionals are challenged to be valuable partners in the Total Quality Management (TQM) effort. TQM calls for PR professionals to rethink how to strengthen their support of management,
Spring 1994
29
Public
Relations
Reaimv
employees, and external audiences. Communication specialists are expected to respond to the needs of managers and employees to be informed of and motivated to implement changes that enhance quality. External stakeholders include clients (current and potential), stockholders of publicly traded companies, and key members of the public. Messages can increase constituents’ awareness of quality efforts and convince them that they are beneficial. Senice quality expects managers, supervisors, and employees to focus on resultswhat is accomplished-by improving process-what is done. This philosophy can be daunting for practitioners who are process oriented. Indeed, awards given to honor the design and execution of public relations campaigns can reinforce a process rather than outcome mentality. Awards often emphasize what a campaign is-what practitioners do-rather than what it achieves. Many people in public relations exacerbate this problem by voicing the timeless self-defense: “You can’t measure what we do.” Because it flies in the face of service management improvement, that philosophy demands reflection on the practice of public relations. The current broadbased commitment to quality poses at least two challenges to PR specialists-whether in companies or agencies. The first challenge is to be part of the management cadre which devises and implements an organizational culture committed to service quality. Communication professionals need to understand and support the principles, goals and strategies that underpin service management and support employees’ awareness of and commitment to excellence (Grunig, 1992, especially chapter 9). As Bahls (1992) advised, “Public relations professionals, whether working inside or outside the company, would do well to understand the principles of TQM. And rather than merely promoting the new standards, the need to be able to help the company meet them.” (p. 16.) Stressing the advantages gained at Dow Chemical USA, Susan Walton (1993) proclaimed that a communication specialist was a fir11voting member of the Quality Steering Team from its formation. The second challenge requires special efforts to help measure and document the quality improvement effort and to report its effects to properly targeted external audiences. Practitioners can advance the service management effort by reporting evidence of quality improvement in messages positioned to reach external audiences and convince them that the company is seriously committed to quality. “The traditional corporate communication style is to always be positive. But quality improvement requires [also) talking about things that go wrong, mistakes, and painful truths” (Quimby, Parker, & Weimerskirch, 1991, p. 54). To strengthen the performance of public relations in support of service quality, this article proposes a philosophy for communicating TQM and discusses stages to follow. If, as many believe, culture is a foundation for quality improvement, practitioners should reinforce what is best about their organization’s culture and help correct aspects that are obstacles to quality improvement. Along with the search for dramatic breakthroughs, the focus should be on constant, incremental improvement targeted to achieve well defined results. To meet the TQM challenge, public relations has to abandon glittering generalities and avoid routine publicity stunts. Approaches and tactics are required to foster a culture that empowers employees, informs them of achievable quality goals, and 30
Vol. 20, No. 1
Communicating Service @al@
Improvement: Another Rokfor Public Rehtions
gains their compliance to increase quality. From inception of the improvement effort, PR should examine customer-client relationships, to increase the likelihood that stories about success and failure of service improvement efforts reach all parts of the organization, to promote strategies that foster quality, and to assess their impact. By exerting their expertise, PR practitioners can increase the speed and quality of messages working their way throughout an organization. Public relations practitioners should not underestimate employees’ need to understand what service quality is- as expected by management and customers. Whereas “the absence of variation” is the hallmark of TQM efforts in the manufacturing and assembly sectors (Port, 1991, p.8), the theme of the service sector should be variation as needed to meet customer expectations and increase satisfaction, a principle that can underpin PR’s response to quality service. A recent ad by Marriott exemplifies this variation; it reported that a desk clerk offered his personal cuff links to a guest who had neglected to pack his and needed them to be properly attired for a meeting. Service is quality when it delights customers. Variation as needed requires that persons strategically deliver predictable and standardized service while being capable of varying the service to satisfy or exceed customer expectations (Zeithaml, 1990).
CHALLENGES AND RESPONSES IMPROVEMENT STAGES: STRATEGY, STRUCTURE AND
IN THREE TACTICS
Three stages typical of successful service management efforts can serve as focal points for implementing desired changes (Leth, 1990). Communication specialists may perform unique roles at each stage of the effort to establish, improve, and proudly proclaim service quality. Stage One: Direction
Setting
and Planning
In stage one, the organization is reconceptualized with the goal of generating changes that enhance quality. Management and key personnel develop and implement plans designed to increase customer satisfaction. This stage features innovative foresight, consideration of capital expenditure, obtainable outcomes, improvement measures, and proactive organizational change strategies (Leth, 1990). To be part of this team, PR needs to determine what can be said and to whom to achieve and reinforce employee and management efforts to make personal and organizational changes. Public relations expertise is needed to decide which messages foster change and to determine which improvements should be announced to stakeholders. Challenges Service improvement challenges management and personnel to refine procedures and policies with the objective of pleasing each customer. Throughout the organizaspring 1994
31
Public Relations Review
tion, planning efforts should link quality to strategic objectives and day-to-day activities. Efforts are needed to coordinate operations and customer contact. During planning, public relations has the opportunity to demonstrate an embracing scope of the company and strong sensitivity to customer satisfaction. The quality criteria used in the Malcolm Baldridge Award assessment process (customer satisfaction, leadership, information, planning, human resources, quality assurance, and results) can be featured in the strategic planning specific to public relations (Skutski, 1992). Vital to this stage is identifying audiences which need service improvement messages and deciding how to reach them in ways that maximize reception, understanding, and motivation. Working with marketing and sales to ascertain “return on service,” public relations should advise management of obstacles to achieving change and recommend how communication can be used to overcome them. From the outset, PR should strive to ensure that service quality promises made by marketing and advertising do not fall short of customers’ sense of the actual quality of service received. l
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Planning to develop the %nternal customer” concept-the rationale and value for improved internal services. Planning is used to discover ways to increase organizational members’ sensitivity to the needs of each other as customers and awareness of how to meet those needs. In that sense, each function and unit inside the organization is an “internal customer” which deserves to be served by public relations. By exemplifying a service commitment to its own internal customers, public relations can encourage other employees to serve one another as internal customers. An internal customer service orientation guides public relations’ efforts to obtain and convey information that its audiences need to understand and appreciate quality improvement. The planning process should develop themes and assure that they are communicated repeatedly, consistently, and coherently in the full array of messages used to support excellence. The objective of PR planning is to help managers, employees, and customers live the company’s quality vision. That vision and the efforts to accomplish it must be real, not the manufacture of skilled writers and electronic media producers. Planning to disseminate the service quality improvement strategy and specific service features to be targeted. Public relations personnel must understand concepts and principles unique to quality improvement strategies; these need to be expressed in a vocabulary employees can understand and enact. Quality needs to be translated into terms customers understand, so that they know what service to expect. At the very outset and throughout the process, the features of service management must be communicated candidly and honestly, to convey executive management’s commitment to achieve measurable outcomes rather than to merely rely on hollow slogans instead of making meaningful changes. One mistake that public relations makes is communicating messages management and quality guidance teams want Vol. 20, No. 1
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conveyed rather than ascertaining what members of the organization and external customers want to learn about the process. Public relations needs to avoid using traditional publicity efforts that make quality improvement a circus; employees have seen publicity events used to promote management programs before and respond negatively to messages that lack substance and do not convey a documented commitment to meaningful change. Public relations should plan to use examples and statistical analysis to demonstrate how the vision is becoming manifest through individual and collective efforts. Public relations can assure that employees are aware of service quality claims made to customers through advertisements (Berry, 1981). These claims serve to define the level of service quality managers and customers expect. l
Planning to acquire customer service-related data needed to compare customers’ expectations with their perceived quality of business unit activities. PRpractitioners can assist the design and execution ofresearch efforts-especially surveys, in-depth interviews, and focus groups-to ascertain customers’ expectations and measure the extent to which service provided satisfies their expectations. Quality public relations is able to ascertain and narrow the gap between what customers expect and what they receive from organizations and their subunits. As Zeithaml(l990) cautioned, “ a major cause of dissatisfaction is the gap between what a firm promises about a service and what it actually delivers” (p. 369). Expertise is needed to narrow that gap (a) by ascertaining the criteria customers use to assess service quality, (b) advising that service be altered to meet the criteria, (c) creating criteria that would lead to greater satisfaction, (d) telling customers how service is improving, and (e) giving customers the means to comment on the service they receive. The following criteria are important to TQM assessment: timeliness, relevance and accuracy of information; candid presentation of information; and messages expressing technical advice key audiences can use to achieve rewards and avoid negative consequences.
Responses In response to service improvement challenges, public relations should plan to communicate constantly and with variety, to establish themes appropriate to total quality improvement, and to provide needed information on demand. During the planning process, public relations can encourage and assist other departments’ understanding of how they can work with one another to increase the understanding of and commitment to quality service improvement. l
Integrating proactive communication strategies into an overall plan for service quality improvement. Communication efforts need to be thor-
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ough, consistent, accurate, insightful, thematic; unified, candid, interesting, and timely. One key communication tactic is to show respect for people and their work, to assure employees that they make a difference. One quality response of public relations is to feature relationship development and team building as expressions of organization culture. In its planning, public relations should think less of service improvement as a short-term campaign and more as a longrange commitment to achieve measurable outcomes. l
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Utilizing data collection mechanisms to ascertain service and customer requirements (a concern that may not reside in marketing). Data from internal and external customers can assist public relations’ ongoing efforts to perform situational analysis. The key to effective data collection is to ascertain which information can make a difference and to obtain it from people who make a difference. This information should be interpreted and used in a form that does not compromise its integrity to truly improve service quality. As public relations works to establish benchmarks to quantity quality improvement, it must not ignore the indicators needed to assess its own success in assisting management and employees to understand, accept, and implement quality improvement. In this way, public relations holds itself accountable. Implement interactive communication forums for achieving workforce awareness and buy-in. Two-way communication is preferable because it increases the likelihood that the best information will be acquired and employed during creation and implementation of service management. It increases empowerment by demonstrating to people that their opinions make a difference. An important communication outcome is to keep managers and employees aware and focused on anticipating improvements and planning ahead. As new goals are developed and old ones accomplished or refined, PR can provide that information to key employees along with rational for changes, successes, and failures. PR personnel can plan to participate in the vital process of opening communication by designing and facilitating forums that promote dialogue to create awareness and commitment. Stage Two:
Service Team
Improvement
This stage revolves around defining and empowering quality teams; it requires that service principles be integrated into all that is done in behalf of satisfying customers. One obvious challenge to public relations is to be an effective team as well as an effective partner to other teams. The challenge entails providing information that help teams to understand service management, to augment and reinforce their commitment to it, and to motivate efforts that enhance the team
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process as well as the ability and willingness to service customers more effectively. To foster and reinforce team efforts requires a culture that stresses customer satisfaction. Monitoring is needed to lessen organization members’ incentives to blame service quality failures on one another or on other groups. The team concept assumes that obstacles to improved quality must be removed and replaced with shared responsibileverything requires ity and commitment. As Bahls (1992) reasoned, “Coordinating a great deal of communication” (p.18). Public relations can help mediate and facilitate the flow of information and influence between key parties. Challenges Management cannot increase quality by issuing directives, but by participating with employees to idemil+ and meet challenges. Middle managers benefit from developing or reinforcing the attitude that employees’ needs for information and involvement in service-related decisions should be met. Learning that their efforts make a difference increases the likelihood that employees acquire a sense of control over their activities and trust other members to perform activities that result in customer satisfaction. In that way, employee empowerment increases. l
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Increasing awareness and educating the workfoorce-particular(y middle managersin the ways that quality is implemented in support of service and integrated into team efitis. Communication is needed to help employees understand the necessity of change and to acquire the attitudes and skills needed to achieve it and cope with it. Interdependency is vital to service improvement; public relations can help employees to see units, functions, and efforts as integrated. Sharing improvement “bbreaktbroughs” in service throtlghout each business unit and organization. PR should be part of the continual effort to overcome resistance to change by featuring progress in quality improvement; this information needs to reach and impress internal and external audiences. Organizational stories shared through conversations are routinely used by individual employees to acquire insights into organizational culture. Public relations can increase the likelihood that employees learn organizational success stories that feature breakthroughs and report the rewards achieved by the organization, key units, or individuals who accomplished that success. A recurring theme of failed service improvement efforts is that management did not empower employees because they were not allowed to carry through their efforts to increase quality; PR can advance the process by seeking and disseminating success stories. “One way practitioners can contribute to TQM is by anticipating and defusing employee resistance” (Bahls, 1992, p. 18). Empowerment results when employees are given authority, within guidelines they have helped to establish, to sat+ customer needs, even in ways that vary from the norm. People
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are empowered when they are rewarded for making necessary changes and solving problems. Employees need to be trained to solve problems. Empowerment is magnified when they obtain information that their efforts make a difference in how the organization achieves its goals. Public relations can obtain and disseminate such information. Improvement efforts are likely to have more impact to the extent that they are personalized; public relations can demonstrate that real people are making real difference. l
Maintaining senior manager leadership and visibility as the improvement effort unfolds. A key public relations tactic is to convey the message that management prizes all innovation which enhances service quality. Such messages can create the culture that reminds management that two-way communication enhances efforts to increase quality and coaches them on ways to work with employees to enhance customer satisfaction. Employees need to be aware that managers are using quality tools and concepts to improve their own work and are making a hands-on effort to work with employees to increase service quality. Success stories and personal statements can demonstrate that management is aware of the difficulties of achieving quality improvement and is willing to assist in overcoming obstacles.
Responses The response to these challenges is to employ communication strategies that make quality improvement real, tangible, and rewardable. PR should obtain information regarding quality improvement, synthesize it, and present it to key audiences. l
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Coordinating data collection fi-om customers and consulting on data collection tools. The key is to be constantly vigilant for indicators of customer satisfaction that are performance driven and measurable. Public relations practitioners are expected to use data collection techniques such as surveys, interviews, focus groups, audits, quality circles, and problem-solving planning sessions. Public relations personnel should establish scanning and monitoring procedures and assist in developing measures to assess internal and external customer expectations of quality and determine whether those expectations are met. Public relations enhances service management by being accessible to employees by obtaining and providing information they believe is useful. E-mail systems and computerized bulletin boards are vehicles which PR can utilize. Rather than thinking of themselves as the exclusive communication unit of the organization, public relations can encourage employees to become creative partners. They can be trained to help public relations acquire and disseminate information. One strategy is to encourage them to seek and present success stories in
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their own words; they should also look for missed opportunities and failures of managers or supervisors to keep the faith to enhance service. This information has more impact if it is presented candidly. People involved in service quality efforts need to help determine the measures and means for data collection that will tell them whether they are achieving quality objectives. Public relations can help identifjr core customers of the organization. l
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Using print and video media to report on the progress of the service management efirt and maintain its visibility An organization should use a variety of media to explain to its people that quality is important to management and to customers; use of the media and message design should promote the organizational persona of quality service. Public relations can train managers and employees to be effective communicators and supply technical support for their efforts to prepare and deliver messages. Such efforts foster the team spirit by empowering employees to help one another. Public relations should position messages where they increase the likelihood of being received and present them in a manner that makes them enticing and motivating. Coaching and &ding senior managers on theirroles in creating and disseminating public messages. These persons deserve assistance in designing and disseminating messages that impress on internal audiences the innovations used to achieve quality. Senior managers need to reach external audiences with messages that report the impact these innovations have on service quality. Public relations can look for and prepare managers to take advantage of occasions at which to describe quality improvement achievements. Stage Three:
Service Quality Integration
All units need to view themselves as integrated into a coherent and encompassing partnership for quality improvement. Communication efforts can help organizational members understand and focus on achievable goals as well as commit to systems that enhance service quality. Individual units should not lose sight of the fact that their commitment to customer satisfaction must integrate with that of other units. Commitment to service quality should be integrated into all that managers and employees do. Because it views the organization as a single entity needing a sense of integrated commitment, PR is a cornerstone to this integration. At this stage, efforts should be made to integrate quality into systems and processes that support quality. The target of this stage includes reaching into departments to communicate the importance of selecting, hiring, and training people to be vital members of the service team. At this stage, customers, suppliers, and investors should receive messages that demonstrate the company’s progress toward improved quality.
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Challenges The challenge at this stage is to discover ways to supply managers and employees with information and guidance they need to see how quality can be integrated into activities of individuals and departments whose efforts interlock in ways that are designed to meet customer expectations. For instance, operations personnel must understand and support the requirements of persons who have direct customer contact. Of special importance are procedures and guidelines employees need regarding how to coordinate efforts to achieve good customer service; this information should help them understand how and when to vary service to satisfjr special requirements and thereby to maximize customer satisfaction. Employees should be encouraged to be alert to opportunities to serve customers in ways that exceed their expectations. l
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Assisting the workforce in understanding qstem refinements which support quality. As systems are refined to achieve customer satisfaction, managers and employees need to obtain that information as quickly as possible in ways that make it official. Public relations can alert audiences to information and assure them that it is policy. PR can listen to employees to learn how to tailor messages that address their specific needs in terms that are meaningful. Departments and unit messages need to be fitted into the “big” picture of quality improvement. One key challenge of a quality communication plan is to design and coordinate messages so that managers and employees understand the total commitment to service quality and know their role in meeting it. Designing and helping to implement communication forums and practices in support of quality in day-to-day operations. A key challenge of a quality service program is to keep the message alive-to update, refine, and communicate basic themes. PR is an excellent organizational position to advocate and operationalize the principle that decisions must be made in concert. It can foster a culture based on two-way communications-openness, supportiveness, candor, and interdependence. To keep efforts vital requires forums and other communication vehicles that give managers means to share messages directly with employees and allow them to respond to those messages. Such processes increase the likelihood that messages are understood and reflect the reality of what employees need to serve customers. Posturing the effort and progress with customers and other external stakeholders. The challenge is to develop lasting harmony between organizational units and their customers. If customers do not learn about new and continuing efforts to improve service, the effort can fail. Customers must know about improvements in quality. If the company is publicly traded, investors need to learn about the impact service management has on profits and competitiveness. The degree to which such messages are believable and persuasive depends on the reputation Vol. 20, No. 1
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the company has for being committed to good customer service. If a company lacks a record of service excellence, proof to the contrary requires vigorous documentation and sustained presentation of progress. Audiences require proof that the company knows how to achieve quality and is committed to it. The persuasiveness of such messages results from reports of business reasons to justify how the company can operate effectively to achieve quality. Responses Audiences-internal and external-are skeptical about claims companies make about improved service. Those messages decay if they are not repeated and do not contain evidence that quality is integrated into day-to-day activities. l
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Highlighting service features in marketing, promotional and publicity materials. Messages to internal and external audiences require carefully presented themes and details to report quality improvements and announce new commitments. Such messages can feature subtle changes in operations and systems that meet or exceed customer expectations. Messages are strongest when they are integrated into all internal and external communication vehicles related to product, service, and image publicity, as well as investor relations statements for publicly traded companies. Developing communication practices in conjunction with managers and supervisors to support continuous improvement. The key is to increase the likelihood that service innovations become known to key audiences who can take advantage of them. Public relations personnel only learn of innovations and quality breakthroughs by being open to personnel at the department or unit levels. Information needed to design messages is easier to gather when management, public relations, and employees are interdependent. Public relations can dispel the notion that service improvement is the latest fad by demonstrating the organization’s commitment to change; reports of action speak louder than words captured as campaign slogans. Professional expertise can assist managers and employees to create messages and use media to communicate quality improvement messages in their own words. Providing skills training to ensure continued eflectiveness in information
sharing and customer relations. Supervisor and employee training should provide statements that can be used to present service in appropriate ways to customers and to seek responses about their satisfaction with the service. These comments can be used to assess how well customers believe the company is achieving its quality goals and to ascertain what customers expect from the service it receives. Supervisors and employees need to adopt quality communication styles characterized by trust, spring 1994
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openness, candor, and two-way flow of information. Part of PR’s responsibility is to build bridges between people inside the organization and between units and their customers; bridges need to replace walls. Using internal communication, public relations can supply all employees with guidelines and scripts needed to increase customer satisfaction. Employees need to know that their efforts make a difference. They should adopt a team spirit that challenges them to strive for higher levels of service because they know that is what others expect of them-and they need reassurance that they can expect other employees and supervisors to strive for increased quality.
CAVEATS
AND
CONCLUSIONS
Differentiate between results-oriented and process-oriented service management efforts; use the latter to achieve the former. Determine which changes make a difference, achieve them, and measure them. Benchmark to quantity IX’s impact on the process. Empower employees by demonstrating that their efforts make a difference in achieving quality, and thereby provide continuity for the quality effort. Help management and employees move from occasional to continual customer satisfaction. Practitioners are often trained to justify the status quo-as being OK. TQM challenges them to strategically create dissatisfaction with the status quo, to motivate constructive change, and to provide information to guide it. In the midst of helping members of the company to improve their performance, PR personnel is given opportunities to reinvent itself. It can increase its own quality and demonstrate its value to management, employees, and customers as it maintains visibility for quality service. No segment of a company is more capable of creating excitement for quality improvement than is public relations.
REFERENCES Bahls, J.E.
(1992) “Managing for Total Quality: Practitioners Must Inspire Employee Involvement.” Public Relations Journal, (April): 16-20. Berry, L.L. (1981). “The Employee as Customer.” Journal ofRetail Banking 3(3): 33-40. Gnmig, J.E. (Ed.). (1992). Excellence in Public Relationsand Communication Management. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Quimby, C., Parker, L., & Weimerskirch, A.M. (1991). “How, Exactly, Do You Communicate Quality?” Quality Proflress, 24(6): 52-54. Leth, S.A. (1990). “The Five Best Practices of Service Leadership.” National Productivity Review, 9(2): 201-212. Port, 0. (1991). “Questing for the Best.” Bwitiess Week, October 25, pp. 8-15. Skutski, K (1992). me 10 most effective communication strategies. Presented at the
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Communicating Quality Symposium, sponsored by American Productivity & Quality Center and International Association of Business Communicators, March 10-12, 1992. Walton, S. (1993). “A Teamwork Approach to Quality Communications.” Continuous Jouivzey, l(3): 10-11. Zeithaml, V.A. (1990). “Communicating with Customers about Service Quality.” Pp. 369383 in D. E. Bowen, R B. Chase, T. G. Cummings & Associates (Eds.) Service Management Efictiaeness San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass Publishers.
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