The Road to Privatisation: TQM and Business Planning

This paper traces the change efforts and road to privatisation of a business unit of a large Australian government department which integrated quality principles with strategic business planning

Linking Employees to Customers: Employee Involvement and Quality Mapping

Employee involvement and connecting employees to customers have both been acknowledged as important components of any service quality improvement program. In practice, though, many quality efforts fail. Quality mapping, a variation on service mapping and an innovative human resource management process, is proposed as a practical methodology to facilitate the involvement of employees in service delivery management and to link employees to customers and to business strategy. It requires changes to the traditional roles of both HRM and marketing

Customer Satisfaction, Loyalty and Public Services

This paper examines the complex issue of customer satisfaction in the context of government social security services. It addresses why governments might wish to improve customer satisfaction, overviews the relevant customer satisfaction literature, and presents preliminary findings from part of a large study designed to concurrently ascertain whether service providers are attuned to recipient opinions, what is important to the recipients, and how they rate the existing service. Service providers perceived that recipients would have a more negative view of the service than actually reported by recipients. Main effects were also found for age and sex. Approximately 38 per cent of recipients indicated that they would try another provider if this became possible; some of this group were also amongst those who were highly satisfied with the existing service. Required frequency of contact was related to disloyalty. Although quality expectations influenced levels of satisfaction, combined predictors were only able to account for up to about 40 per cent of the variance

Customer-Driven Research: The Enhanced Focus Group to Establish Value and Service Quality

This paper discusses a customer-driven research approach which overcomes many of the problems of existing market research techniques and integrates qualitative and quantitative techniques to provide insights into what creates value for customers. The approach described provides a variation on the Gap model and is illustrated in the context of business-to-business marketing. A by-product of the approach is that it acts as a very powerful impetus for service quality improvement

Customer-Driven Research: The Enhanced Focus Group to Establish Value and Service Quality

This paper discusses a customer-driven research approach which overcomes many of the problems of existing market research techniques and integrates qualitative and quantitative techniques to provide insights into what creates value for customers. The approach described provides a variation on the Gap model and is illustrated in the context of business-to-business marketing. A by-product of the approach is that it acts as a very powerful impetus for service quality improvement

Linking Employees to Customers: Employee Involvement and Quality Mapping

Employee involvement and connecting employees to customers have both been acknowledged as important components of any service quality improvement program. In practice, though, many quality efforts fail. Quality mapping, a variation on service mapping and an innovative human resource management process, is proposed as a practical methodology to facilitate the involvement of employees in service delivery management and to link employees to customers and to business strategy. It requires changes to the traditional roles of both HRM and marketing

The Road to Privatisation: TQM and Business Planning

This paper traces the change efforts and road to privatisation of a business unit of a large Australian government department which integrated quality principles with strategic business planning

Customer Satisfaction, Loyalty and Public Services

This paper examines the complex issue of customer satisfaction in the context of government social security services. It addresses why governments might wish to improve customer satisfaction, overviews the relevant customer satisfaction literature, and presents preliminary findings from part of a large study designed to concurrently ascertain whether service providers are attuned to recipient opinions, what is important to the recipients, and how they rate the existing service. Service providers perceived that recipients would have a more negative view of the service than actually reported by recipients. Main effects were also found for age and sex. Approximately 38 per cent of recipients indicated that they would try another provider if this became possible; some of this group were also amongst those who were highly satisfied with the existing service. Required frequency of contact was related to disloyalty. Although quality expectations influenced levels of satisfaction, combined predictors were only able to account for up to about 40 per cent of the variance