MBA (SSME) - AGW 651

Service Management

Case Study : Clean Sweep Inc.

Group Members: Yoong Tuck Seong & Andrew Tan Keng Seang

15th August 2009

 Agenda
• Clean Sweep Overview
• Analysis / Recommendation
• Conclusion
• Q&A
• The End
Objectives
1. Case study concentrates on Service Quality

2. How to define Service Quality?

– Dimensions of Service Quality
– Service Quality Gap Model

3. How to achieve Service Quality?

– Statistical Process Control (SPC)
– Cost of Quality
– Unconditional Service Guarantee

4. Service Recovery
– The systematic-response approach
Clean Sweep Overview

• Clean Sweep Inc. (CSI) is a custodial-janitorial services company

that specializes in contract maintenance of office space.

• CSI have several major contracts to service some of the state

government’s offices.

CSI’s Business Strategies

1. Focus only on Janitorial services of office space (competitive service strategies :
Focus)
2. Maintain small workforce, while performing high-quality work at a reasonably rapid
speed.
3. Higher pay range for employees as compared to CSI’s competitors
CSI’s Nature of Service Act
Direct Recipient of the Service
Nature of
the Service Act People Things
People’s bodies: Physical possessions:

Tangible actions
Janitorial services

People’s minds: Intangible assets:

Intangible actions
Present CSI’s Operations
• Each crew’s working hours => 8.5 hour/shift
• 15 minutes paid rest breaks and 30-minute unpaid lunch break
• The cleaning staffs is divided into 4 crews. Each crew are under the a supervisor of a
crew leader.
• Individual staff costs are higher, but CSI management believes in greater
productivity levels in a smaller-than-average workforce.

Crew’s general task (Listed in no order of importance)

1. Vacuum carpeted floors

2. Empty trash cans and place trash in industrial waste hoppers
3. Dry-mop and buff marble floor
4. Clean rest rooms
5. Clean snack bar areas
6. Dust desk tops
CSI’s Current Situation
1. A department of the state government overseeing CSI
– Makes periodic random inspections
– Rate the cleaning jobs
– Also receives any complains about the custodial service from office
workers

2. CSI’s contracts renegotiation is several months away. CSI’s

management would like to maintain high level of quality to
improve its competitive stance.

3. Problems and concerns voiced out by crew members (medium crew

supervisor)
• inequity in crew leaders’ attitude and performance expectations
• lack of opportunities for personal advancement

4. Employee turnover has been fairly high but is still lower than many
other competitors.
Complains of Cleaning Crews

Ratings of Cleaning Crews

Q1: X-bar chart for complaints and plot the average complains for each crew during the
nine-month period. Same for performance ratings. What does this analysis reveal about
the service quality of CSI’s crews?

1. To obtain X value, R value, UCL and LCL value

i) Complains of Cleaning Crews value from variable control chart

constant for sample size of 10

UCL = 1.98 + 0.308 (5) = 3.52

LCL = 1.98 – 0.308 (5) = 0.44

ii) Ratings of Cleaning Crews

R
X
UCL = 6.16 + 0.308 (3.22) = 7.15
LCL = 6.16 – 0.308 (3.22) = 5.16

10
2. To obtain the average complains and ratings value per crew for each month

i) Complains of Cleaning Crews

ii) Ratings of Cleaning Crews

X-bar chart for average complains for each crew during the nine-month period.

Observation :
1. Throughout 9 months, each of the 4 crews has ≥ 1 occurrence out of the control limit. Crew 1 = 1 occurrences ; Crew 2 =
2 occurrences ; Crew 3 = 4 occurrences and Crew 4 = 3 occurrences
2. During the 5th month and onwards, Crew 2 and Crew 3 complains are within control limit. While Crew 1 and Crew 4’s are
out of control.
3. The number of complains for each crews is on a decreasing trend. This shows that the customer are complaining less as
they might be more satisfied with CSI’s service quality.
Analysis / Recommendation :
1. Crew 3’s number of complain could be higher due to more workload for each crew members as every individual in Crew 3
needs to clean more floor space as compared to the other 3 crews. Crew 3’s supervisor has to communicate his / her
expectations and help to prioritize task for his / her crew members based on customers’ feedback and expectations. The
supervisor can also practice less micro managing to his / her crew members. 1
 X-bar chart for average ratings for each crew during the nine-month period.

Observation :
1. Throughout 9 months, each of the 4 crews has ≥ 2 occurrence out of the control limit. Crew 1 = 2 occurrences ; Crew 2 = 2
occurrences ; Crew 3 = 6 occurrences and Crew 4 = 4 occurrences
2. During the 3trd month’s rating and beyond, Crew 2’s ratings are within control limit. While the other crews are out of control
limit. Crew 4 needs attention from the management to increase the performance rating.
3. The performance ratings for each crews is on an increasing trend until the 7 th month. Only Crew 4 continued to improve the
performance rating from the 7 th month and beyond.
4. The overall ratings for all 4 crews was above 5 starting 3 rd month and beyond. This shows that the customers’ satisfaction
on CSI’s service quality is improving.
Analysis / Recommendation :
1. CSI management has to investigate why the performance rating for Crew 1, 2 and 3 starts decrease after the 7th month.
There is a possibility that the crew members do not understand customers expectation.
2. CSI management needs to understand their customer’s expectations and explore how their customer rate the each
crew’s performance rating. 1
Q2: Discuss possible ways to improve service quality.
a) Achieving Service Quality
• Statistical Process Control
• Cost of Quality
• Unconditional Service Guarantee
Cost of Quality
Cost of Quality Definition CSI
Prevention Cost arise from efforts to keep 1. Training program for cleaning staff
defects from occurring at all • Improve communication and cleaning skills
• share best practices
• standardize cleaning procedures
2. Recruitment and selection
• Select experienced staff
3. Quality improvement projects
• Deming PDCA
• DMAIC

Detection Cost arise from detecting 1. Supervision

Costs of control (Costs of defects through inspection, • Standardize level of supervision / detection
conformance) test, audit • Crew members treated equally across 4 crews
2. Third-party audit
• Fresh ideas and other feedbacks
• Walk-through-audit (Service managers lose sensitivity
due to familiarity)
3. Peer review (refereeing)
• subject matter expert
4. Customer comment card
• feedback to further improve service
• understand customers’ requirement and expectations

Internal Failure Cost incurred from defects 1. Rework

caught internally and dealt • Repeat cleaning process
Costs of failure of control with by discarding or repairing
2. Machine downtime
(Costs of non- the defective items
• Cleaning machine failure
conformance)
External Failure Cost incurred from defects 1. Negative word-of-mouth
that actually reach customers 2. Loss of future business
• Feigenbaum, Armand V. (1991), Total Quality Control (3 ed.), New York, New York: McGraw-Hill, p. 111, ISBN 9780071126120, OCLC 71640975
b) Service recovery Approach
- Systematic-response approach
1. Identify critical failure points (depends on urgency)
2. Ensure that the information obtained is the latest or updated
3. Determine appropriate recovery criteria
4. Plan type of response
reference from (T.C. Johnson and M.A. Hewa, “Fixing Service Failures,” Industrial Marketing Management 26, 1997,pp. 54-62)

c) Service Quality Dimensions

Dimension CSI
Reliability Constantly perform the guaranteed level of services reliably and accurately
• On time
• Consistence
• Without errors

Responsiveness • Must be willing to assist customers promptly

• Needs to be swift to work on customer’s requests.

Assurance • Competent to perform cleaning service

• Be polite and respect every customer
• Efficiently converse with customers

Empathy Approachable, sensitive and ability to understand customer’s needs

Tangibles To show evidence of care and detailed cleaning are exhibited

Q3. Describe some potential strategies for reducing CSI’s staffing problems.

Analysis
1. Crew 1 and Crew 4 has the least number of inequity complains and no advancement feedback.
2. Crew 1’s and Crew 4’s performance rating is one of the highest among the 4 crews.
3. While Crew 4’s number of customer complains is among the lowest among the 4 crews.

Recommendation
1. The management can organize more trainings to enable Crew 1 and Crew 4 to share their best practice with Crew 2 and 3.
2. CSI management can deploy job rotations for each individuals to different buildings or different crews. This can help to
minimize the employees from getting bored of their present job and also experience different customer’s expectations.
3. The management has to standardize the level of supervision. It is reported that supervisor of Crew 1 and Crew 4 are the
least strict. This could be the reason why Crew 1 and 4 are performing better than Crew 2 and 3.
4. CSI management can promote the “Best Employee of the Month” award. The winner of the award can be given a one day
leave or be bestowed with cash incentives to further motivate their employees to be more hard-working and go beyond their
daily cleaning routine job.
 Service Quality Gap Model

Gap 5
Customer Customer Cleaning Satisfaction Survey
Customer Satisfaction
GAP 5
Perceptions Expectations Gap 1
Walk through audit
Managing the Customer / Understanding
Evidence Marketing Research the Customer Gap 2
Communication
GAP 4 GAP 1 Poka-Yoke
Taguchi Method
Management
Service
Perceptions Gap 3
Delivery of Customer Cost of Quality
Expectations SPC
Unconditional Service Guarantee
Conformance
Design GAP 2
GAP 3
Gap 4
Conformance Service Design Service Recovery
Service
Standards
Conclusion
1. CSI management needs to be pro-active in improving the present service quality by
• Understanding customer’s expectation and experience
• explore how their customer rate the each crew’s performance rating (each
individual’s experience and expectation are very subjective or different)
• Motivate the crew members through incentives (monetary or a day’s leave)
• Standardizing level of supervision – all employees treated equally and with
respect
• Measuring the quality of work through random audits or Walk-through-audit

• Publish on high ratings

2. CSI managements can arrange a meeting with the department that oversees
custodial service contracts to discuss on potential improvement plans. This approach
can reflect CSI’s commitment for continually commitment and improvement in
providing the best custodial-janitorial service.

3. Besides creating a niche in the custodial-janitorial service, CSI can further diversify
their business portfolio to household cleaning.
Q&A
The End