Quality of services and its indicators

The evaluation of the quality of services is now considered to be one of the most important elements of quality of service management. Due to the evaluation, it is possible not only to control the quality of services, but also to provide a basis for the analysis of management and the adoption of important management decisions. In addition, such an assessment allows us to establish feedback, which in turn will contribute to the development of the system.

The quality of services is regulated by the international standard "Administrative quality management and quality system elements". In order to better understand the essence of the concept and its necessity, a definition of the term "service" should be given.

So, the service is the result of the interaction between the customer and the supplier, as well as the outcome of the supplier's internal activity in order to meet the customer's needs. Note that the requirements for the ordered service must be expressed by clear characteristics that can be determined and further evaluated. The processes that ensure the provision of this service must also be expressed by certain characteristics and affect its performance. All characteristics, as a rule, have the ability to be evaluated by a service organization on their acceptability according to established standards.

The quality of services and control over it creates favorable opportunities for increasing efficiency, reducing costs, improving service performance, expanding the market. Usually the management of the service and its provision is carried out by monitoring the process of providing the service. Timely control of process characteristics will help to achieve and maintain the required level of quality. It should be borne in mind that the process of providing services can be either purely mechanized (dialing a phone number) or personified, for example, when providing medical or legal services.

Top management is responsible for quality control policies and develops rules that deal with such issues as:

- quality of services;

- the image of the service organization;

- the purpose of ensuring the quality of services;

- choosing the approach to achieving the goals;

- the role of the company's employees who are responsible for implementing this policy.

One of the primary tasks of the management is to ensure the availability of quality policy. It must be feasible and understandable and solve certain tasks. The quality of services and their evaluation should be directed to:

- satisfaction of all customer requirements;

- constant improvement of quality;

- taking into account the needs of society;

- efficiency of services.

The indicators of the quality of services must necessarily ensure that the quality of services corresponds to foreign experience, quality improvement, characteristics of properties at the stages of the life cycle of the service.

According to the national standard, all indicators are divided into several groups.

The first group is the destination indicators. These include the compatibility, application and enterprise indicators (for example, average waiting time for customer service, material and technical base).

The second group is safety indicators. For example, radiation safety, safety for life or the environment, explosion safety, etc.

The third group is reliability indicators. This is trouble-free, reliable results, safety, durability, resistance to external factors.

And, finally, the fourth group includes indicators of the professional level of employees, namely the level of training, knowledge and skills, compliance with the standards prescribed in the documents, goodwill and care for customers, etc.

All these and other indicators can be classified differently, according to other criteria: by the method of expression, by the stage of definition, by properties.