It is not too difficult to find guidance in business today. There are books by the hundreds and thousands; there are magazines such as Business Reform. But in spite of all the help there are businesses?even Christian businesses?struggling with the concept of quality service.
Only recently a Christian removalist I had recommended let my friends down by not turning up at the arranged time. After four hours of waiting, the exasperated family who, because of poor English skills, could not call the removalist themselves, called me. Their daughter and chief family translator was at school and difficult to contact.
So I called the carrier who was most apologetic and he said the drivers of the truck would call to advise of their estimated time of arrival. An hour-and-a-half later, I call again complaining there is no word from the drivers. This time I am given the mobile phone number of the drivers of the truck scheduled to do the removal, and we sorted things out. They had been held up on a previous job, and would arrive at 6:00 PM to do the job, seven hours later than scheduled.
But in seven hours, the removalist company made no effort to place a call to the family to let them know of the revised time. The result is disgruntled customers and now I’m aggravated and probably won’t recommend the company again.
One wonders why companies fail in such little things as letting customers know what is going on. Yet it is failures like this that are so common in business?and we wonder why so many businesses fail.
Is the problem lack of knowledge? Don’t business owners know they should call customers when a delivery cannot be made on time?
Or perhaps the issue reveals the real problem: a lack of character in people running businesses. Now by suggesting character is the problem, we get closer to a solution to the problem of quality in the business. Quality is an outcome of character?of the business owners and all the staff.
But this makes quality in the business a religious issue, not an educational one. And while teaching people quality control practices is an important activity, if the people are not inclined to want to change their current work habits so quality becomes ingrained in the business, little will be achieved.
Character, at the end of the day, is the outcome of certain religious ideals. Christianity asserts that mankind’s basic problem is one of character. Evil is preferred over goodness. Sloppy quality is preferred over real quality.
The result is unhappy customers, and clients?and an opportunity in the market place for those who have real character and integrity to take on the competition and outperform them time and time again.
