But they often believe that their principal obstacle in this is the lack of support they get from supervisors and central groups. Employees aren't empowered until they know what they're empowered to achieve in terms of goals, what they're expected to do, and what kind of help they can count on. The plain facts are that quality expectations of the marketplace have outraced the quality delivered by some servicers and the servicers don't have a realistic peg on how big that quality gap is. To really be in the competitive race today, a service company has to have a clear window on the quality world to see what par really is. For many services, this window is too small, gets fogged over too frequently, and isn't used enough by top executives to determine the quality-improvement factors for strategic business planning.
Technology greatly affects the people factor in service companies.
This creates a group of quality improvement islands without bridges. Unless it is built on an integrated quality foundation, information-processing technology will merely generate service failures faster than before. For example, the financial services senior manager who has a strong lending background but understands little about information technology may have good intentions but not yet the confidence to effectively deal with operations issues. Experience shows that the leverage for accomplishment comes from a clear, customer-oriented total quality management system throughout the organization with effectively structured quality work and teamwork processes that people understand, believe in, and are part of. It takes a relentlessly disciplined method to establish and maintain this system.