The International Journal of Public Sector Management; Bradford Vol. 7, Iss. 2, (1994): 42.
The South East Queensland Electricity Board (SEQEB), is the country's leading public utility, and an Australian Quality Award winner in the large organization category in 1991. It is the first public sector service organization in Australia to achieve this highest business honour. SEQEB began its quest for quality by focusing on customer satisfaction. As a State government service agency, it has been responsible for the distribution of electricity to more than 800,000 domestic, commercial, industrial and rural customers since its inception in 1977. Electricity is purchased by SEQEB from the Queensland Electricity Commission, the generation authority for the State.
Customer service has not always been of paramount importance to SEQEB. Until the mid-1980s the organization was largely driven by productivity. In April 1988, SEQEB officially adopted Total Quality Management (TQM) as a common basis for incorporating contemporary management strategy into organizationwide customer service. A substantial up front investment commitment was made to establish customer service as the "norm" of the organization. SEQEB's mission statement is to "Excel in Satisfying Customers' Energy Requirements"[1]. It is based on five quality management principles:
* respect for people;
* management by fact;
* customer satisfaction;
* teamwork; improvement through PDCA.
These principles reinforce the emphasis on customer service through influencing the organization to empower its workforce in managing their work processes. In SEQEB, long-and short-term strategies are designed for customer service through the horizon of these five principles.
CUSTOMER FOCUS IN SEQEB
SEQEB moved towards customer orientation with the slogans " The Customer is King" and "If it weren't for the customer, we wouldn't be here" throughout the organization using various visual aids--staff magazine, videos, newsletters, posters. With the advent of TQM, and company wide awareness training, the concept of the "Internal Customer" was introduced through the supplier-process-customer inter-relationship.
Both internal and external customer focus emerged as a driving force behind as well as a challenge to the quality movement within SEQEB. Initially, the challenge was to convince the staff of a large public monopoly of the need to provide service to a standard normally expected from the competitive private service sector. Prior to 1985 SEQEB was a typical public sector organization of that time. The culture was focused on production rather than on serving customers' needs. Planning, particularly budgeting, was based on projections of historical trends, and the level of services provided was determined by the internal resources available. Staff often felt little commitment to the organization, and were slow to respond to customer and community needs. These programmes, although generally rhetorical at first, were remarkably successful. This success heralded the birth of a cultural change in what was fortunately a receptive workforce.
Internal Customer Service
Part of the strategy for changing the culture included the establishment of a quality team structure, with customer requirements as the primary focus. This led to the formation of 150 quality teams involving approximately 900 out of 2,700 full-time staff by the end of June 1992. Teams may be one of two types[2]:
(1) Task Teams--established by management to give specific focus on quality management and customer requirements.
(2) Functional Teams--established by staff who share a common work function to address their quality concerns.
The quality team structure established a framework to align organizational purpose with roles and responsibilities, staff and processes. The quality teams help employees to work together towards[3]:
* improving the quality of products and service;
* developing the skills and abilities of employees;
* promoting communication among employees;
* enhancing the quality of worklife;
* problem-solving using a structured process.
External Customer Service
The ultimate customers of SEQEB are the external customers or electricity consumers. The needs of the external customers drive all quality improvement efforts, commencing with the inputs to the corporate strategic planning process, selection criteria for task and functional teams, supplier quality assurance standards, and analysis of internal processes, the last of which determines the organization's capability to satisfy external customers.
SEQEB's corporate strategic plan nominates objectives in just three areas of strategic importance: customer and community satisfaction, staff development and relationships, and business performance. The needs of the external customers are met through a structure which allows control and improvement of internal processes using quality assurance (QA) and departmental purpose analysis (DPA)[4].
Quality Assurance systems based on Australian Standards AS 3900 (ISO 9000) series have been established. At first, the major focus of quality assurance was the improvement of supplier performance in the materials acquisition process. At that time, SEQEB was effectively acting as the point of final inspection for most of the suppliers. It was essential to reduce the considerable resources consumed in carrying out testing and inspection of incoming products as well as administration for returns of faulty products. This was not to mention the consequent delays in providing field staff with the materials needed to service their customers.
Departmental Purpose Analysis is a structured approach to examining quality in daily work through quality team systems. DPA enables every functional work group to analyse systematically the key processes with which it is involved, thereby enabling improved customer service, process improvement and waste reduction. DPA and QA are linked together in that they both focus on control and improvement of processes. The DPA technique provides a package of information which enables the development of the overall quality system. The output of DPA may be used as an informal quality system or reformatted to suit a standard based quality assurance system.
The focus on internal and external customer services came together under the management philosophy of TQM. Systematic education and training programmes were conducted to develop awareness of all staff in TQM and customer service. Data was collected to provide objective evidence for management decisions and problem solving activities in the provision of customer service.
The South East Queensland Electricity Board (SEQEB), is the country's leading public utility, and an Australian Quality Award winner in the large organization category in 1991. It is the first public sector service organization in Australia to achieve this highest business honour. SEQEB began its quest for quality by focusing on customer satisfaction. As a State government service agency, it has been responsible for the distribution of electricity to more than 800,000 domestic, commercial, industrial and rural customers since its inception in 1977. Electricity is purchased by SEQEB from the Queensland Electricity Commission, the generation authority for the State.
Customer service has not always been of paramount importance to SEQEB. Until the mid-1980s the organization was largely driven by productivity. In April 1988, SEQEB officially adopted Total Quality Management (TQM) as a common basis for incorporating contemporary management strategy into organizationwide customer service. A substantial up front investment commitment was made to establish customer service as the "norm" of the organization. SEQEB's mission statement is to "Excel in Satisfying Customers' Energy Requirements"[1]. It is based on five quality management principles:
* respect for people;
* management by fact;
* customer satisfaction;
* teamwork; improvement through PDCA.
These principles reinforce the emphasis on customer service through influencing the organization to empower its workforce in managing their work processes. In SEQEB, long-and short-term strategies are designed for customer service through the horizon of these five principles.
CUSTOMER FOCUS IN SEQEB
SEQEB moved towards customer orientation with the slogans " The Customer is King" and "If it weren't for the customer, we wouldn't be here" throughout the organization using various visual aids--staff magazine, videos, newsletters, posters. With the advent of TQM, and company wide awareness training, the concept of the "Internal Customer" was introduced through the supplier-process-customer inter-relationship.
Both internal and external customer focus emerged as a driving force behind as well as a challenge to the quality movement within SEQEB. Initially, the challenge was to convince the staff of a large public monopoly of the need to provide service to a standard normally expected from the competitive private service sector. Prior to 1985 SEQEB was a typical public sector organization of that time. The culture was focused on production rather than on serving customers' needs. Planning, particularly budgeting, was based on projections of historical trends, and the level of services provided was determined by the internal resources available. Staff often felt little commitment to the organization, and were slow to respond to customer and community needs. These programmes, although generally rhetorical at first, were remarkably successful. This success heralded the birth of a cultural change in what was fortunately a receptive workforce.
Internal Customer Service
Part of the strategy for changing the culture included the establishment of a quality team structure, with customer requirements as the primary focus. This led to the formation of 150 quality teams involving approximately 900 out of 2,700 full-time staff by the end of June 1992. Teams may be one of two types[2]:
(1) Task Teams--established by management to give specific focus on quality management and customer requirements.
(2) Functional Teams--established by staff who share a common work function to address their quality concerns.
The quality team structure established a framework to align organizational purpose with roles and responsibilities, staff and processes. The quality teams help employees to work together towards[3]:
* improving the quality of products and service;
* developing the skills and abilities of employees;
* promoting communication among employees;
* enhancing the quality of worklife;
* problem-solving using a structured process.
External Customer Service
The ultimate customers of SEQEB are the external customers or electricity consumers. The needs of the external customers drive all quality improvement efforts, commencing with the inputs to the corporate strategic planning process, selection criteria for task and functional teams, supplier quality assurance standards, and analysis of internal processes, the last of which determines the organization's capability to satisfy external customers.
SEQEB's corporate strategic plan nominates objectives in just three areas of strategic importance: customer and community satisfaction, staff development and relationships, and business performance. The needs of the external customers are met through a structure which allows control and improvement of internal processes using quality assurance (QA) and departmental purpose analysis (DPA)[4].
Quality Assurance systems based on Australian Standards AS 3900 (ISO 9000) series have been established. At first, the major focus of quality assurance was the improvement of supplier performance in the materials acquisition process. At that time, SEQEB was effectively acting as the point of final inspection for most of the suppliers. It was essential to reduce the considerable resources consumed in carrying out testing and inspection of incoming products as well as administration for returns of faulty products. This was not to mention the consequent delays in providing field staff with the materials needed to service their customers.
Departmental Purpose Analysis is a structured approach to examining quality in daily work through quality team systems. DPA enables every functional work group to analyse systematically the key processes with which it is involved, thereby enabling improved customer service, process improvement and waste reduction. DPA and QA are linked together in that they both focus on control and improvement of processes. The DPA technique provides a package of information which enables the development of the overall quality system. The output of DPA may be used as an informal quality system or reformatted to suit a standard based quality assurance system.
The focus on internal and external customer services came together under the management philosophy of TQM. Systematic education and training programmes were conducted to develop awareness of all staff in TQM and customer service. Data was collected to provide objective evidence for management decisions and problem solving activities in the provision of customer service.
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