European Master Facility ManagementMay 2001

The model of communicationBetween Facility Manager and End Users for getting real satisfaction Hitoshi Kumagai

CHAPTER 1.Introduction

1-1. Quality of facility management

Recently, The position of facility managers in organisations has got clearer than ever before, as an expert who supports core-business. Facility management was originally a function inside organisations. Now a day, organisations have tended to distinguish their core-business and non-core functions from restructuring or reengineering aspect. Support functions, including facility management, had had to clarify their role how they can contribute to core-business. On the other hands, in the very hard competitive situation, the role of facility management has become important. Alexander[1] said, “In this climate of change, quality of life and environmental issues are involved which together with issue of heritage and of conservation become part of the business agenda. Facilities Management is at the heart of this process.”The workers are suffers hard time, therefore, the work environment should be more comfortable and helpful. To develop the environment is exactly the job of facility managers.

Thus, the relationship between core-function and facility manager has become the one between customers and services providers. It means facility manager is expected to provide better services totheir customers. Furthermore, total facility management contractors have emerged; such as, Johnson Control IFM and SI-CBX. They earn money by providing services on behalf of inhouse facility manager. They have to guarantee good quality of services.

What is good quality of service? Unfortunately, there is no absolute quality measurement of services themselves. Barrett[2] says“There is never any objective measurement of a professional services.” Then, what direction should facility managers aim to? Friday and Cotts[3] said at the beginning of their book, “Only the customer will define whether you are performing the right services.” How customer perceives the services proved to them defines the quality of services. Cook[4] also said, “The customer’s perception is their reality. Customer service is about perception.” Quality is defined by customers.

1-2. User satisfaction

How should facility manager measure the quality of services. Friday and Cotts[5] said, “a measure of quality for the customer is how close we come to their expectations about service and their perception of the way we perform.” Customers, then. express their perception through expressing their level of satisfaction. Friday and Cotts[6] also said,“If the perception matches the expectation, you have satisfied customers.” The quality can be measured by the satisfaction of customers. Therefore, how to get the customer satisfaction is important aspect of facility managers to guarantee their performance.

Who is the customer? How the customer is identified? There are several aspects of identifying the customer. Friday and Cotts[7] categorized customer into, organization unit, building unit, business unit, staff of the facility organisation, top management, external clients and visitors, external vendors to the facility organization, external tenants of building, and the facilities themselves. Those can be figured as Fig 1-1. However, the research focuses on each “end user.” Even an FM organisation makes a Services Level Agreement (SLA) with “Top management” or “Business units,” primarily the end users perceive services and express their satisfaction. Level of satisfaction of “End users” is often a condition in SLA which FM organisation have to evaluate and achieve the level. Therefore, to get end users satisfaction is important.

On the other hand, the paper regards a whole FM organisation as “Facility Manager.” It does not matter for End User that who of FM staff provides services, their satisfaction express to anonymously the whole FM organisation. It is important that the whole organisation gets end users’ satisfaction.

1-3. Communication in facility management

How can a facility manager providea service that meets end users’ expectation? It seems just facility manager knows the requirements of end users and provides a service that meets the requirements. However, facility managers cannot always achieve it, because resources for services have limitation. In addition, end users’ expectation is subjective. Then, what should facility managers do? Cook[8] says, “customers’ expectation can often be conditioned by the service providers themselves…in Disney attractions, the published waiting time is always 5 minutes more than the actual waiting time.” Some information conditions customers’ expectation. For another example, Van der Sluis[9], the facility manager of Schiphol Group said, he explains the service level, which is agreed with the manager of an end user, who and when requires much higher grade services than the SLA of his/her department, and the user almost every time can understand his explanation. Informing or explaining, here a word ‘communication’ is used for them, helps to fill the gap between expectation and perception. In other words, communication with customer is important to get satisfaction.

1-3-1. How does communication support getting users’ satisfaction?

The example of Disney attractions, above mentioned, might show the communication can control customers’ expectation before they perceive the services. And they would consequently satisfy after finding the service is better than their expectation. The example of Schiphol Group may show the communication can adjust customers’ expectation after they perceive the services. And they would consequently satisfy after knowing the services level is rational. Is it true or is there any other communication? Facility manager should know relationship between communication and satisfaction.

1-3-2. What ways of communication exist between facility manager and end users?

Kokuryo[10], a Japanese professor at Keio Business School, categorises the communication generally in seller and customer into three types(Fig 1-2):

-One way S-to-C:one-way from seller to customers
such as, providing product feature and availability

-Interactive S-to-C:interacting between seller and customers
such as help desks, and third

-Interactive C-to-C:interacting amongcustomers
such as reputationand forum on the Internet.

If the model is applied into facility manger and his/her users, what kind of communication may exits in each type, or how can each type of communication be characterised according to getting satisfaction? Facility manager should know the structure of communication with end users.

What tools are effective for each communication?

The resource of communication also has limitation. Recently, there have been many IT systems for supporting communication with customers. The most popular system is web-site on the Internet or intranets. For instance, facility management department of Schiphol Group developed a web catalogue of their services on the company’s intranet. In addition, many IT industry companies provide some systems, called Customer Relation Management System. The most typical system of this is customer front office solution (see section 2-1). The system manages the process of ordering of services, and it support for the claim from customer. It also can record those claims, and it consequently gives data for analysing services quality. Furthermore, Kokuryo shows a platform on computer network that manages interactive C-to-C7. For instance, The Internet auction or user’s forum of some product are regarded. Kokuryo said that if some rules and common words are defined, C-to-C can be accelerated
Can the ideas of systems be specified and applied into the communication of facility management? Facility manger should implement efficient communication support system.

1-4. Customer Relationship Management

There is an interesting business concept and research field of it, named “Customer Relationship Management (CRM).” The first emergence of the concept is said an article, “Zero Defections: Quality Comes to services.” The article explained the cost of losing customer is high, and insisted the importance of aiming ‘Zero Defection’ (to lose customer). The article[11] said,zero defection, “Requires mechanisms to find customers who have ended their relationship with the company – or are about to end it.” In the research field, recently, it have been insisted organisations should shift from product-oriented marketing to customer-oriented marketing, and maintain relationship with customers. Now, it is discussed how companies can provide ‘personalised’ services to individual through maintaining and cultivating relationship, and using IT tools.

Requirements of customers (= end users) of facility management are various, and the end users only define the quality of services mentioned above. Therefore, facility management is highly customer-oriented business. the concept of CRM must be able to be used for improving facility management. Especially, there are plenty of ideas that using IT in CRM. They seem to be useful for facility management. CRM is more explored in next chapter.

1-5. Objectives of the research

The objective of the research in general is to find a model of communication between facility manager and endusers to improving the end users’ satisfaction. To achieve the objective, the research divides into follows sub-objectives,

Defining what types of communication exist between facility manager and end users: occasion, contents, and interactivity (one-way, two-way).

Finding how each type of communication increases satisfaction of end users.

Defining the policy for the information system which supports the communication.

1-6. Hypotheses

Proactive communication from facility manager to users (one way S-to-C)increases end users’perception of services level and accelerates interactive communication.

Interactive S-to-C communication betweenfacility manger and users (Interactive S-to-C) increases end users’ satisfaction.

Interactive communication among users (Interactive C-to-C) reveals the potential expectation of end users.

1-7. Study design

The research is carried out by the way of literature search, experiment and benchmarking approach.

First of all, the research explores literatures in mainly the field of ‘Customer Relationship Management (CRM),’ and defines the model for facility managementcommunication. The field of CRM has been well researched since an article[12], “Zero Defection-Quality Comes to Services,” was issued. It supposes to be easier to set a possible model than observing real facility management jobs.

Then, the model is examined by an experiment. The model applies into a real set of end users and facility manager. The limitation of resources of the research, it is difficult to apply some treatments (= to change communication way) to real stage. Therefore, the study will be examined by a the comparative experiment design.[13] The study will be carried out by following steps (Fig 1-3),

Selecting several groups of facility manager and end users in an company. Sites (places) are regarded as the set.

Characterizing each facility manager’s communication according to the model.

Collecting data of satisfaction, perception, expectation, and communication experience of each site of end users.

Finding the relation between the each case and the collected date of end users.

Define ideal character of the model of communication

The difference among the communication character: perception, expectation and behaviour of the sites are regarded as treatments applied on each site, and the level of satisfaction of each site is regarded as results of each treatment. Then, the study analyses the treatment and the results to find the relationship between them.

Finally, the paper to seek best communication support system using benchmarking approach. The benchmarking is carried out by literature and market information. Through comparing with the model of communication and CRM solution system, a policy that facilities managers should have when implement this kind of system will be defined.

1-8. Setting

The study is researched in office facility services, where the services are provided for mainly ‘people’ who have feelings of satisfaction. The data will be collected in a company where facility services are wholly outsourced to a main contractor. Because the quality guarantee seems serious in the cases, it supposes to be easy to find the well-developed communication. To find appropriate model, the data will gathered in the UK where the outsourcing business is well developed.

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Chapter 1 Introduction

European Master Facility ManagementMay 2001

The model of communicationBetween Facility Manager and End Users for getting real satisfaction Hitoshi Kumagai

CHAPTER 2.Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

2-1. The Concept of CRM

The ides of CRM (Customer Relationship Management) is high potential to adopt it into facility management. Only customer (again using the ‘customer’ instead of ‘end user’ here, because CRM discusses various industries and customers) defines the quality of facility management. Therefore there must be some hint to improve the quality of facility management, especially through communication between customer and services providers, because the relation in CRM is based on the communication. In this chapter, the paper explores the study field of CRM and finds the relation between CRM and facility management.

2-1-1. Why is customer relationship important?

There is an article[14], which is thought of the trigger of CRM study, “Zero Defections: Quality Comes to services.” At the time when the main actor of industry was changing from manufacturing to services, the article tried to define the quality revolution of services industry. Reichleld and Sasser[15], the authors of the article, placed a hint of the revolution from manufacturing industry,

When manufacturers began to unravel the costs and implications of scrap heaps, rework, and jammed machinery, they realized that “ quality” was not just and invigorating slogan but the most profitable way to run a business. They made “zero defects” their guiding light, and the quality movement took off.

Then, they[16] defined the defection in service companies as “customers who will not come back.”They revealed, “Customers generate increasingly more profits each year they stay with a company,” such as shown in Fig 2-1. If customers leave the company, they[17] said, “They take all that profit-making potential with them.

Therefore, they insisted it was important to retain customers. They recommended to manage defections as follows,

To find customers who have ended their relationship with the company or are about to end it.[18]

To learn from defectors why they left the company and to use that information to improve the business.[19]

The article led vast study about the relationship, and later study found more positive relationship than to just avoid defection, it is said ‘Loyal customers’. Cook[20] said, “Some customers for example may only have a relationship once with the company at one extreme; at other, customers will use the organisation’s products or services on a regular basis,” and showed the levels of loyalty of customer as Fig 2-2.

Now, many companies, especially retailers, adopt customer loyalty programmes. According to Cook[21], “During the last 10 years, more than 150 loyalty programmes have been established in the UK, issuing over 50 million cards and costing over £3 billion in rewards.

2-1-2. How are customers satisfied through communication

According to an article[22], there are three types of communication with customers, the courteous, the manipulative, and the personalized communication. The article showed an simple example of them, a lemonade stand, as follows,

There are three of them (lemonade stands), run by Jane, Jessica, and Judy.

When you approach Jane for lemonade, she greets you with a friendly smile and chats about the weather and other low-involvement topics as she fills your order. Jane follows the model of the Courteous Communication.

Jessica, on the other hand, greets you with prepared patter. “how can I help you? You’d like some lemonade? Great. Are you aware of our Frequent Buyers’ Program? For the low price of 75 cents a month, you can have lemonade every day the temperature exceeds 80°. Can I sign you up?” Jessica follows the Manipulative mode.

Finally, Judy greets you with a real hello. She talks to you about your dietary needs. What would be best for you, the sugared or the sugar-free lemonade? Perhaps you’re diabetic, or you’re trying to lose weight? Judy has an appropriate, personalized program just for you. You leave feeling that you may have told your lemonade seller more than you wanted to, but that she really understands your specific lemonade needs. Judy is purveyor of the Personalized Communication Model.

The CRM concept is manly focusing on Judy’s the Personalized Communication Model. The concept is more than the Manipulate communication, which unfortunately seems to be adopted in many loyalty programs. An article[23] defined the basic process of CRM in four, “Identify your customers,”“Differentiate them, ”“interact with them,” and “customize.” Let the process adopt into Judy’s example.

Identify your customers

Judy knows who you are. She treats you as an particular individual. She must know your name or she must remember you when you will come next time.

Differentiate them

She tries to find your dietary needs, such as you are diabetic, or on a diet.

Interact with them

She make a conversation with you to find your needs and solution. If you are on diet she recommends sugar-free, but she may ask your favourite taste, et cetera.

Customize

Finally, she offers an appropriate lemonade. She must offer same lemonade or find better one when you will come next time.

2-1-3. CRM is a quality improvement cycle

CRM studies have discussed not only what is the good communication at the moment of conversation, but also how to use the information from conversation. Swift[24] defined the process in more adoptable for whole organisation and in cyclic process rather than one time project, as follows and Fig 2-3. The cycle is similar to the traditional cycle in TQM of Plan-Do-Check-Action.