Today, service organizations are operating in the global market to satisfy all his customers all over the world. However, their success greatly depends on the services they give to their customers. This includes offering appropriate and quality services and giving customers their needs at the right place, time and price competitively and continuously. To enhance productivity of a service organization and become the best performers, it should develop policies and employ strategies that will always deliver services on time, satisfy expectations of all customers and lower cost of services while at the same time maintaining and improving standards of the services given. The function of the service organization should achieve effectiveness and efficiency in what it does. It should also know how to deal with problems once they occur. The paper explores Red Cross, voluntary service organization. It will discuss the various strategies it uses to satisfy its customers.
Customer expectations and satisfaction for American Red Cross
American Red Cross is an organization that deals with saving lives of people all over the world. It is an organization that offers help in case of accidents and other misfortunes. It aims at delivering safety training to people, saving lives of people in accidents, training people how to take care of the sick at home and providing nutrition education. It also provides relief for wounded in major disasters. It is non-governmental organization that depends on money from donors, blood from generous people and volunteers to provide lifesaving services to the world.
Although the government is non-governmental, it is required to provide services that satisfy the customers. To satisfy customers’ expectations, it should deliver exceptional and quality services to customers. Offering quality service constantly is difficult and that is why the organization should use strategies that would help it achieve this objective.
The organization should also be proficient in providing its services. This implies to providing good services on time. It also involves employing people who are ready to work anytime and can offer efficient and effective services to victims in a disaster. The employees should also be courageous, confident and does not need any supervision while working. He or she should also be ready to travel or go anywhere for the sake of saving life.
The organization needs to observe service quality specifications, which are set goals for machine and employee to ensure delivery of good service. The specifications are needs that customers express in time of need. The service provider should satisfy these needs according to the conditions given by the customer. Managers should act as good role models to their juniors by keeping the commitment of offering quality work.
Employee performance is an important factor that an organization should observe as it is what customers look when they want to see if the organization has quality service. Employees that get into contact with the customers should be fully trained so that they can assure customers of their proficiency. Evaluations and rewards help such employees to perform well in their jobs.
A service organization should have good management of service expectations to ensure that the expectations provided by the organization are realistic. Customers normally evaluate service qualities through service expectations and it is therefore important to provide expectations that are achievable and at the same time satisfy customers’ needs.
An organization can set these expectations through external communication and advertizing. Good internal communication between departments facilitates easy accomplishment of promises made. Customers can easily inform other people about bad service offered in an organization the same way they spread news about a good service. For this reason, marketers should learn the things customers use to evaluate service quality. Some of these things include responsiveness, reliability, empathy and assurance, which determined by the performance of the employee.
Strategies for change
Transport and communication has also been improved through involvement of air transport. Red Cross is now involving transportation of service providers and victims through helicopters. This form of transportation has enabled employees to reach the victims on time and save their lives. It has also enables easy transportation of victims to hospitals before their conditions worsens. Good transport and communication has increased chances of saving lives of many people who experience bad tragedies. There is also good communication where one can reach them during emergencies.
Another strategy used in Red Cross is training the managers to create change in the management. The main aim of training managers is to enhance quality management that would encourage teamwork among employees. Supervisors normally play important role in managing change as they influence employees to accept changes in the organization. This will therefore advocate for change strategies that improve services provided to customers.
Training the employees is also another strategy that will improve the employee performance. It adds knowledge to service providers and build behaviors that customers expect. Employees are also able to obtain teamwork skills with the aim of satisfying all their customers. For instance, in Red Cross organization, the service providers attend the victims in group to help all people at the same time. This not only saves time but saves life of many people as they are attended to altogether on time.
Another important strategy that can create change in Red Cross is the provision of good medical facilities. With the many improvements made in the medical field today, there exist many effective medical facilities. Red Cross is using some of the best technological equipment to attend to their victims. They are using effective medicines that relieve pain immediately as well as the most efficient first aid techniques to save the lives of people.
Money is an important asset when it comes to any organization even the non-profitable organization. Money enables these organizations to buy the important facilities that are used to serve the customers. Non-profitable organization such as Red Cross needs to impress the donors so that they can help them financially. To impress them, they need to offer quality services and get more customers. With this, their hard work is supported by donors as well as people who donate blood that would help victims.
Financial scheduling and management is a further basic strategy that any given organization must incorporate in order to turn into more efficient and pertinent in its operations. Whether the organization is an open corporation, private company or any form of business venture, the monetary undertakings are indispensable because once they are altered, the firm cannot run efficiently. Public enterprises engage very qualified financial directors to direct the financial sector so that they may bound cases of misappropriation of money and ensure precision in the firm.
Impacts of quality management and service organization
Quality management results to effective team work and good communication among all employees. This creates an environment conducive for working effectively as there is peaceful correlation among workers. Teamwork also increases efficiency during work as workers are able to put together different ideas to solve problems they encounter. They also share ideas that may assist the service providers in providing quality work.
Quality management and service organization has also enabled workers to offer exceptional services that in turn have attracted more customers to the organization. For instance, more volunteers have come out in Red Cross to help save life of fellow beings. People have also volunteered to donate blood to save lives of the affected people. Donors have also appreciated the work of Red Cross by providing the organization with money that has enabled it to afford effective facilities that can improve their services.
Quality management also facilitates good financial planning and management. Most companies’ hires people who are well skilled in the fiscal tasks so that they may supervise the funds well and guarantee the steady flow of activities within the organization. Financial planning is the approach in which the existing funds are accounted for in order to carter for the operations of the firm. This is a major responsibility to any financial department because the administration wants to invent ways of using the available funds to run the organization smoothly.
Recommendations that enhances organizational strategies
The organization should emphasize on more teamwork among employees. This will increase productivity and competitiveness among workers. The organization should also enhance communication among the workers to create an interactive environment that encourages sharing of ideas.
People should be taught the basic first aid techniques that would help them attend emergency cases when the Red Cross is present. Nutrition education is also important as it encourages people to live a healthy life to avoid some preventable diseases.
The organization should also advertize their quality services to the public through the media and internet. These advertisements should be aimed at providing basic knowledge about safety training, nutrition and first aid measures used during emergencies. This increases the awareness to the public and be able to handle emergencies with confidence.
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