Consistency - Leads to Quality, Customer Retention

Copyright 2008 by Charles R. Schaul, Boulder, Colorado. All rights reserved.

Lack of consistency is the bane of many businesses. For example, it is obvious in a restaurant with inconsistent quality or service. How many times will you go back if the food tastes great one week and bland the next? Or gives great service one week but is terribly slow the next? Lack of consistency is seen in many other places as well: a distributor with inconsistent inventory coverage; an on-line retailer with poor customer service; a manufacturer with inconsistent product quality or delivery performance; a law firm with inconsistent response time to client calls…. All these forms of inconsistency damage a business and drive customers away.

It is safe to say then, that firms that consistently provide customers with satisfactory products or services create more wealth for their owners than do firms that don’t do so. With profit in mind, following are four concepts that lead to consistent performance in business.

Policies, Rules and Work Instructions provide a framework for operations. Policies are corporate and usually strategic in nature. For example, one company does not want to incur the administrative cost of contracting with the government. It decided upon a Policy that it will not contract with the government. There is no question about it. It is a policy.

Rules are less strategic in nature, such as the myriad of rules that a Human Resources department imposes on a workforce.

Work Instructions tell the staff how to do the work. A work instruction might be that all inquiries are entered into the Inquiry Register that shows the inquiry details, and eventually shows if it becomes an order or why not if it doesn’t. Without policies, rules and work instruction, formal or informal, performance of tasks is hit or miss, and inconsistency reigns.

Caution! Policies, Rules and Work Instructions do not imply rigidity. They give w ww ;alksdjforkers a framework for doing their work in a consistent way, but do not mean to stifle creativity and empowerment.

Building consistency without training is like building a new road without a set of plans. No one seems to know what, when or where to do anything. Good training is a must when implementing work instructions. Without it the new instructions are wasted. Having people understand what is expected of them, and why, leads to consistent, repeatable application of the way the work is done. Having a team understand their instructions, and execute them well as a team, builds morale and performance.

“I’ll try.” “I’ll do my best.” “If I remember.” Theses are the words that mean NO COMMITMENT to getting a job done. If you are implementing a new set of work instruction for a particular task, and entering data in a log or register is the final step of the instruction, you must be committed to the final step, and train your staff to be equally committed. To develop consistency, and to maintain it, people must be committed to the rules, instructions and training that guide their work. Without commitment and discipline there is no consistency. In this context “discipline” does not mean punishment. It means a steady application of the instructions through persuasion and learning from mistakes, not punishing for them.

Accountability is the last step for insuring consistency. Accountability means giving clear instructions, making sure people understand them, and holding people responsible for following them. This does not mean rigidity, or punishment. It means having certain expectations for performance and holding to it through encouragement, training, gaining greater commitment.

Charles Schaul, Partner of SixPillars Research Group, focuses on reducing customer attrition through better market alignment, strategic initiatives and employee commitment, responsibility and accountability.