Roundal Wright Retirement Homes - Case Study Example

Roundal Wright retirement homes Name Professor Institution Course Date Executive summary This report is formulated to assess poor quality of service at the Roundal Wright retirement home using various quality assessment tools. The report will also discuss the quality improvement models that can be used to improve performance of this business. Roundal Wright retirement home is 55 self-contained flats retirement home which was built to provide residence for either singles or couples who are at between the ages of 55 and 85. Mavis was an employed in this home as assist housekeeper and was responsible for making sure that all the communal areas, sitting rooms, dining room and lift and corridors were kept perfectly clean. As routine check-up of customer service review, the area Manager was to visit the complex in a fortnight and Mavis asked Sandy to find some good opinions about the home from customers to quote. It was established that there are several complaints that were not resolved. Some of these complaints include inadequate reserved parking space, a lot of time spend of queues in the dining hall, dirty toilets, and insufficient variety of foods on the menu and less spacious in the lift that cannot accommodate customers who use the wheelchair. Table of Contents Executive summary 2 Table of Contents 3 Introduction 4 Theoretical definition of “quality” according Roundal Wright Retirement Home 4 The quality assessment tools used to analyze situation in Roundal Wright Retirement Home 5 Quality improvement models recommended for good service quality 8 Conclusion 12 References 12 Introduction In the current world of business, service sectors now play a significant role in growth of any country (McCabe, Rosenbaum & Yurchisin 2007, p.7). As such, the form of customer service must be quality to make the business competitive to maintain customer satisfaction, efficiency and effectiveness. In the hospitality sector like the one that Roundal Wright retirement home operates in, customer service is regarded as the general activity of recognizing and fulfilling customer needs. Walshe, Harvey & Jas (2010, p.175) argues that once customers’ needs are clearly recognized and known, customer representative must anticipate and fulfill them so as to maintain customer loyalty. Roundal Wright retirement home must always know that customer satisfaction presents a clear indication of how effective the organization can be and whether it can compete in the business. Based on the evidence, this report is formulated to assess poor quality of service at the Roundal Wright retirement home using various quality assessment tools. Theoretical definition of “quality” according Roundal Wright Retirement Home Quality is regarded to be conditional, perceptual and rather subjective feature and could be comprehended differently by different individuals (Ramseook-Munhurrun, Lukea-Bhiwajee & Naidoo 2010, p.38). Some may think they offer the best quality if they have never had the experience form competitors or from top performance in the market. This perspective justifies the situation that was witnessed Roundal Wright Retirement Home. The retirement home had experienced several verbal complaints such as the disorganized parking space, poor menu and too long queues at the dining room just to mention but a few. Even though the complaints were received by Mavis, who was charged with the responsibility to handle the mentioned activities, he did not take heed to improve them. Another undoing of this organization was to employ a former high school cook to handle the meal of couples aged between 55 and 85. At the same time, the cook was the one carrying out the purchase yet he or she had no knowledge and experience on purchases. From this perspective, it can be held that Roundal Wright Retirement Home employees defined quality from their little experience of the hospitality industry. Mavis had no experience in the Retirement Home service while the cook had only worked in a school that is characterized by a different category of customer who has different taste and preference hence different quality. That means that, quality was defined completely by the consumers on the basis of an individual's assessment of their whole customer experience (Ramseook-Munhurrun, Lukea-Bhiwajee & Naidoo, 2010, p.46). The quality assessment tools used to analyze situation in Roundal Wright Retirement Home One of the quality management tools that can be used to analyze the situation at the Roundal Wright Retirement Home is the Sigma Six. It must be noted that what was lacking at this retirement home is the professionalism. The cook did the purchases yet he had no knowledge and experience. Mavis too was mean and did allocate himself parking space yet customers had no proper parking lot. In this case, he failed to realize that the customer was an asset to their business. According to Taylor (2008), using Sigma six ensures that only professionals are hired so that the operation at the organization is also professionalized. This tool would also be used to improve output procedure and quality by means of identifying and removing of the causes of complaints and the reduction of inconsistency in the business processes (Patton 2005, p.56). Hiring the right people alone do not ensure that change is effected. With the changing business environment, training forms a great pillar of success. Training the existing and the new employees enables good coexistence and cohesion. Adoption of sigma six supports top management on the issues of training and team formation. When an organization has employees who are experienced, they are assured of processes running smoothly (Patton 2005, p.59). The current system at the retirement home lack variety of menu which the different customers can choose. If the situation remains that way, customers would be forced to look for somewhere else. The situation can be improved by adopting DMAIC, a Sigma Six approach (figure 1). This strategy calls for housekeeper at the Retirement Home to listen to the complaints of the customers and define the customer needs. Mavis must measure, analyze the situation and understand the extent to which it can sink the business, improve it before it affect the business further and control it from happening in the future (Patton 2005, p.55). Figure 1: The DMAIC six sigma improvement cycle Pareto analysis is another alternative tool that can be used to analyze the current situation at the Roundal Wright Retirement Home. The organization faces many challenges caused by few elements. These few elements if ignored can result in a bigger loss and finally, closure this retirement home. These few elements are the inadequate number of employees and professionalism (Karuppusami & Gandhinathan 2006. p.374). This is, in fact, reflecting the 80/20 rule of Pareto analysis. Another case is that the management should consider that about 20% of their menu would justify 80% of the profit received by the retirement home. By applying a Pareto Analysis, the housekeeper, Mavis Long would understand which menu products to concentrate this business around. According to Karuppusami & Gandhinathan (2006, p.378) the tool is very reliable in identifying top segment of causes that needed to be tackled to solve most of the problems. During the analysis, it allows the management to concentrate on those risks that have the most effect on the organization (figure 2). In this case, electrical faults and dirty are the major threats to customer service. Figure 2: the bar chart showing tackling of problem from the bigger to smallest according to Pareto analysis Quality improvement models recommended for good service quality Today, active contribution in the quality improvement is important to the hospitality sector (Karuppusami & Gandhinathan 2006, p.11). The areas that are important are proper quality diagnosis, assessment and satisfying the required quality. This has not been in seen at Roundal Wright Retirement Home even as the service keeps on deteriorating. May be the management started on a wrong note by not finding out the needs of retired people age between 55 and 85 which they serve. When customer needs are not identified as in the situation of Roundal Wright Retirement Home, they cannot be met. Another thing that matters is hiring employees who understand and are experienced on specific customer segment needs (Walshe, Harvey & Jas 2010, p.175). In this case, this was not the case, and the situation prompted immediate reaction from customers. Roundal Wright Retirement Home must always realize that customer satisfaction as one of the major components in the quality management (QM), a strategy that focuses overall satisfaction through the constant product development. McCabe, Rosenbaum & Yurchisin (2007, p. 6) contend that a dissatisfied customer normally stops using services without waiting for development action taken by the management. Poor quality always drives off future performance reduce. Based on the poor performance, quality assessment models like Model Improvement from Institute for Healthcare Improvement and SERVQUAL model use to examine the situation. Model Improvement from Institute for Healthcare Improvement takes the form of Plan-Do-Study-Act (Figure 3). Roundal Wright Retirement Home was in a total mess as far as quality customer service is concerned. For them to improve the situation, they needed a plan showing the budget and the scope (Griffin 2003). From Retirement Home’s case, one would say that they needed qualified employees to help them bring the change, i.e. one who is proficient in purchase and supplies and an expert in planning. From this, the company can study what the experts have suggested and act on. In the service sector, the reaction after change is effected is always immediate. As started earlier the change fronted by the Model Improvement from Institute for Healthcare Improvement require a time frame (Griffin 2003). This means that the company must first deal with critical problems before embarking on those that can take a long time. In this case repairing electrical faults, clearing toilets and bringing new variety of foods would bring great impact to reviving the confidence of the customers. The resulted of these actions can be measured within a short time. This improvement in reality will attract immediate reaction from the customers. Langley et al. (2009) maintains using Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) cycle is sure way of achieving positive result, and the model have been used by most successful organization in their endeavors to remain competitive (figure 3). Figure 3: Using Institute for Healthcare Improvement model (The Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA)) The Servqual quality model would offer a very important study of the gap between expectations and perception of the client, regarding with customer service at Roundal Wright Retirement Home. According to Ravichandran, Prabhakaran & Kumar (2010, .P) this aspect explains that the customer service has five elements that must be satisfied by customer service representatives so as to achieve customer loyalty (Ravichandran, Prabhakaran & Kumar 2010, p.9). These elements are reliability, assurance, tangibles, empathy and responsiveness. As it stands now the situation at Retirement Home do not meet any of the Servqual elements. When marketing the organization the management could have persuaded the customers how reliable the service was. These sometimes can be very frustrating when promised a lot, yet you find very little being done. The management can never escape immediate criticism. The Servqual provides that the management must narrow the gap between consumer expectation and housekeeper perceptions (Shahin, 2005, p.6). Figure 4: Gauging service quality with SERVQUAL model It is recommended that they do this by carrying out thorough marketing research and interpret the information appropriately. This would help the business to reliably discharge its services. The complaints at the retirement home can also be attributed to lack of planning to act fast to offer specific services. Shahin (2005, p.5) asserts that when proper planning is done, organization is saved from embarrassment of trying to correct things in a hurry. Extra cost used can also be used elsewhere to bring in new products. In Roundal Wright Retirement Home view, complaints were a result of poor planning of their activities. Hence the management has to set up extra funds to build new parking space, build a spacious lift which can accommodate disabled couples using wheelchairs. Finally, the company has to admit their mistakes, not by expressing it openly, but by correcting and improving the situation to uplift the confidence of their customers (Ravichandran, Prabhakaran & Kumar 2010, p.7). Conclusion With the service sector surpassing that of agriculture in terms of growth, quality customer service has also become a pillar to prosperity. The needed result remains the satisfied customers. If the client demands are not met, the retirement home gets poor performance. It is insignificant for the organization to make sure that the employees provide the best service to their customers. Managers must remain keen on ever changing business environment and focus on continuous improvement on quality on those points that are directly critical to their business. Various models and tools must be used to align the operational strategy with the objectives. References Griffin, F 2003, Improvement Collaborative: Design and Implementation. Pp. 1-22, Retrieved on 4th March 2014 from http://www.hhsc.state.tx.us/1115-docs/LearningCollaboratives.pdf Langley, et al. 2009, The Improvement Guide: A Practical Approach to Enhancing Organizational Performance (2nd Edition), USA, Jossey-Bass Publishers Karuppusami, G & Gandhinathan, R 2006, Pareto analysis of critical success factors of total quality management: A literature review and analysis, The TQM Magazine, Vol. 18 Iss: 4, pp.372 – 385. McCabe, D., Rosenbaum, M & Yurchisin, J 2007, Perceived Service Quality and Shopping Motivations: A Dynamic Relationship, Services Marketing Quarterly, 29(1), 1-21. Patton, F 2005, Service Quality: Does Six Sigma Work in Service Industries? Quality Progress, p. 55-60. Ravichandran, K., Prabhakaran, S &Kumar, S.A 2010, Application of Servqual Model on Measuring Service Quality: A Bayesian Approach, Enterprise Risk Management, Vol. 1, No. 1, pp. 7-9. Ramseook-Munhurrun, P., Lukea-Bhiwajee, S & Naidoo, P 2010, Service Quality in the Public Service, International Journal of Management & Marketing Research, 3(1), p. 37-50. Shahin, A 2005, SERVQUAL and Model of Service Quality Gaps: A framework for determining and prioritizing critical factors in delivering quality services, Department of Management, University of Isfahan, Iran, p.1-10. Taylor, G 2008, Lean Six Sigma Service Excellence: A Guide to Green Belt Certification and Bottom Line Improvement, New York, NY., J. Ross Publishing. Walshe, K., Harvey, G & Jas, P 2010, Connecting Knowledge and Performance in Public Services: From Knowing to Doing, Cambridge University Press. Read More