Question: You have had great success deploying the complete quality process (CQP). How is it different from the SERVQUAL instrument for improving service quality?

Townsend:

SERVQUAL. I double checked on the internet and one of the descriptions was “It is one of the pre-eminent instruments for measuring the quality of services as perceived by customer.” It is a measurement tool. It’s a marvelous, elegant measuring tool design specifically for service. I wrote this down too, “The five dimensions it measures are tangibles, reliability, responsiveness, assurance, and empathy. Measuring those, if you have a good accurate measure, should produce a rich source of data. You have this marvelous bunch of data. But it is still, it’s a measuring tool. Now you need to have a system that can take that data and convert into ideas. Make it part of the way you do things. That’s the way you take advantage of the SERVQUAL, is you have a system, again, a complete quality process or whatever system you happen to have that works well for you, that can use the numbers fruitfully. To simply accumulate a big pile of numbers is of no use. You got to be able to use the numbers.