Are we providing a quality service?

Usually, quality improvement is referred to as an internal objective, but without specifying what one means by quality of service. The fact of speaking about improving quality without defining what it is, how it is perceived by clients and how it can be improved and increased has very limited value. Frequently, this improves the quality of services “in name only”.

Client expectations are the real reference point for evaluating quality of service. In order to satisfy and go beyond client expectations, it is useful to ask ourselves the following questions:

1. Do we make an effort to present a realistic picture of our service to clients? That is, from the client’s point of view, do we really offer what we promise?

2. Do we make it our priority to provide the service correctly from the very beginning? That is, what margin of error do we have? Do we regularly evaluate our service to identify and correct potential defects?

3. Do we communicate well with our clients? That is, do we get in touch with them regularly in order to determine and better understand their needs?

4. Do we surprise the client during the process of providing the service? That is, are we aware that the process of providing the service is our main opportunity to exceed client expectations? Do we take the measures necessary to achieve excellence?

5. Do we understand that problems in the service are opportunities for impressing our clients? That is, do we make the effort to retain our clients after a problem has occurred?

6. Do we constantly evaluate and improve our results in response to client expectations? That is, do we work with results that are more than just adequate?

Upon answering these questions, it can be observed that quality involves aspects that go beyond the linguistic quality of a translation. Linguistic quality is simply a dimension of quality, known as the technical quality of the result of the productive process of a service. That is, it is what is given to the client when the productive process and vendor-client interactions have finished.

Clients can measure this dimension of quality by using the existing quality standards in the industry as a reference. All too often, considerations regarding technical (or linguistic) quality are seen as the most important aspects of quality. However, this is true only in situations in which service vendors are capable of developing excellent technical solutions. Therefore, a strategy based on technical quality is successful only when a service vendor attains a level of technical quality not reached by the competition. Unfortunately, this is increasingly less frequent, as there are many other translators who can provide more or less the same technical quality.

Of course, this doesn’t mean we shouldn’t always be aware of questions related to technical or linguistic quality, or that improvements to it aren’t necessary in quality management, but we have to understand that it is only one of the dimensions of quality. The other dimension of quality is functional quality, which is the way in which vendor-client interactions and the vendor’s own actions are managed. As a result, translation service requires adopting a holistic approach to services marketing to address matters related to quality. Holistic marketing includes external marketing, internal marketing and interactive marketing.

External marketing includes preparing an offer of service, setting the price, and distribution and promotion of the service. Internal marketing refers to work done in order to continually train the service vendor in order to offer the client the highest possible satisfaction in terms of the service. And interactive marketing includes the vendor's abilities in relation to how staff treats clients.

We have to remember that clients judge quality of service not only by its technical or linguistic quality (for example, the accuracy of the translation), but also by its functional quality (for example, the vendor sends reports on the status of the project to keep the client updated).

The concepts of internal and interactive marketing applied to translation industry were presented in the 4th Proz.com Argentina Conference 2009. See http://www.proz.com/conference/115?page=speakers
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Sources:

1. Parasuraman, A., Zeithmal, V.A. y Berry, L.L. A Conceptual Model of Service Quality and its implications for Future Research. Journal of Marketing. 1985.
2. Grönroos, Christian. Marketing y gestión de servicios. Ediciones Diaz de Santos S.A., 1994.
3. Berry, Leonard y Parasuraman A. Marketing Services: Competing Through Quality. The Free Press, 1991.