On my list of companies to interview, two are service firms—Citibank and UnionBank. I have yet to talk with the quality director of the former. As to the latter, I was able to talk to its Six Sigma Leader a few days back. He says that the bank is yet to launch its Six Sigma project middle of this year.
Six Sigma has always been associated with manufacturing firms. Seeing the benefits and savings that it brought to these firms, service firms wanted to take a bite of the pie. Soon enough, financial institutions, health care companies among others began implementing Six Sigma.
An article on Working Knowledge gives some advice on how to adapt Six Sigma methods to service processes.
1. Determine which parts of your service processes are the best candidates. Classify your processes into highly customized (e.g. complex IT systems implementation), mass-customized (e.g. media buys), or standardized (e.g. credit card account services or fast-food service). Take for example, website development. Highly customized website developers are likely to achieve benefits from Six Sigma in project administration: client set-up, billing and collection, and, perhaps, in project status reporting. Mass-customized web developers can apply Six Sigma to hone their core service. Standardized services have the greatest Six Sigma potential because they use software or websites to take clients through the entire process. A human gets involved only to answer a question.
2. Define what you mean by a service defect and how you intend to measure it. Most Six Sigma programs for services define a defect as a flaw in a process that results in a lower level of customer satisfaction or a lost customer. In short, a service defect means your processes are not delivering on your promise to customers.
3. Probe relentlessly for root causes. Once you’ve identified and measured specific service defects, it will be easy for you to streamline rules and procedures and improve the training for process improvement.
4. Remember, this is a long-term commitment. This initiative takes a while to bear fruit, and you can never put the initiative on autopilot. A successful Six Sigma effort requires relentless communication and reinforcement—well beyond what most leaders assume is enough. Thus it pays to scope your projects well and monitor your organizational culture.
Read more: Six Sigma: It’s Not Just for Manufacturing
Definitely, Six Sigma methodology will be good for the services industry as well. After all, as Edward Baker, author of Scoring a Hole in One, says, “It is application of the technique that matters.”
