Once again, the old story rings true..it all starts with the vision. When we think about any engagement - the Continual Service Improvement mindset and its model are at the core. What are the business goals and the high level objectives. Understanding this is crucial.
When we think of Continual Improvement, we actually mean the process of stabilising and brining out consistency in the growth and improvement of services and processes. The continual approach, repeatedly analyses and improves the service on an on going basis.
Some of the continual improvement tools include:Corrective Action Analysis
Preventive Action Analysis
Customer Satisfaction Analyses
The Quality Management system, part of ISO, is a good example of a system used to ensure the overall objectives of an organisation are achieved. These days Continual Improvement is recognised as the most effective way for companies to improve efficiency and improve quality.
Customer feedback and evaluation are crucial to determining 'how am I doing'? It's a two way process, if we have Service Strategy we have Service Management. It's an opportunity to see how I'm doing, to fill those gaps and make things better. Feedback and evaluations are good indicators to track the performance and expectations from the customer's perspective. Review process steps and support from management are welcome and important factors.
Unfortunately, many organisations take the wrong approach to Continual Service Improvement, they see it as a bolt-on or quick fix process. It's more about that, it's the hands on, high level, proactive approach to improvement.
For successful service improvement it's important to have well documented and clearly defined processes. Stakeholders should be involved in improvement discussions and examples of the weaknesses of the service should be available. Points of failure are identified and corrected, complexity is reduced where possible and safeguards are put in place to protect quality.