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Churches embrace service quality and quality assurance in managing their operations and resources.
Quality is one of those terms that can be very vague, depending on our frame of reference, so let’s look at a couple of formal definitions.
Dictionary.com defines quality as “Character with respect to fineness; high grade, superiority, excellence; degree or standard of excellence.”
This definition focuses on doing things excellently.
The American Society for Quality (ASQ) defines the term as:
“The characteristics of a product or service that bears on its ability to satisfy stated, or implied needs, and a product or service free of deficiencies.”
This definition focuses more on creating products and services that are free of defects.
If you purchase, you expect quality!
When we think about product quality, we think about products we purchase, like a car, a refrigerator, or maybe a lawnmower.
We like to use products that perform as we expect them to when we buy them.
For example, when we buy a car, we expect that car to operate without problems for at least the warranty period and would hope that it operates without issues for years after that.
Assuming we do our part by maintaining it.
Quality is viewed very differently in the service sector because it is more experientially based.
In other words, people judge service quality based on their perception of the experience.
For example, when we go to the hospital, we judge the care we receive based on how we are communicated with, how efficient the registration process is, or how polite and caring the staff are.
It is the experience that we judge more than the clinical care because (unless we have a clinical background) we don’t know if someone is taking our blood pressure correctly or our temperature correctly. We just know how they treated us during the encounter.
For churches, our customers are visitors, members, employees, and volunteers.
And they judge us based on how we interact with them and how efficient and effective our operations are.
History of Quality
Quality practices can be traced back to the 13th century when craftsmen began organizing into unions called guilds to maintain quality standards.
This practice continued, and by the mid-1750’s, factory systems of product inspections started in
Great Britain expanded and grew into what we now know as the Industrial Revolution.
Then, early in the 20th century, manufacturers began incorporating quality practices into their manufacturing processes.
During WWII, the US military inspected products made for the war to ensure the safety of its troops.
To save time and money, they began using sampling techniques (inspecting a small sample size of product units rather than an entire batch), specification standards (using agreed work instructions based on best practices), and training on statistical process control techniques (using data to monitor and control product quality).
After WWII, the quality revolution began in Japan, and with the help of two Americans, Joseph Juran and W. Edwards Deming, there was a slight shift in how quality was done.
Rather than focusing on inspection, there was an emphasis on improving organizational processes through the people who used them – instead of product inspections.
By the 1970s, the US automobile and electronic industries were broadsided by Japan’s high-quality competition and responded by emphasizing statistical control methods and approaches that embraced the entire organization.
This ultimately birthed (TQM) or total quality management as a business practice.
Healthcare jumped on the bandwagon and began using quality approaches to the healthcare process in the early 1990s.
Since the turn of the century, quality has moved beyond manufacturing and healthcare to the service, education, and government sectors.
Churches Care About Quality
Nonprofit and church organizations are the newest groups to embrace quality practices in managing their operations and resources.
This is because their customers (visitors, members, employees, and volunteers) have become accustomed to high standards of excellence in other industries and expect the same from the church.
Everyone likes organization, efficiency, and excellence, and who, more than the church, should be operating out of a passion for excellence? It’s our calling!
How is the service quality in your church?
History of Quality source: ASQ
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