Service consistency improvement of facilities management service providing organisations in Sri Lanka

Abstract

Service consistency acts as a key media to achieve sameness and fairness in service delivery. Service consistency is vital to attraction of new customers, enhanced corporate image, reduced costs, and increased business performance. Nonetheless, struggle in developing and applying measurements for service quality can be commonly identified with service consistency failure situations. Hence, to better manage changes as well as to overcome such issues, organization should adopt a proper methodology to improve service consistency for Facilities Management (FM). Thus, this study aims to improve the service consistency of FM service proving organizations in Sri Lanka. Case study method was adopted in qualitative phenomenon. Under the case study method, three cases (FM service providing organisations) were studied. Twelve (12) semi-structured interviews were conducted among the FM related professionals in the selected cases to collect the data. Case study data were analysed by using the content analysis and crosscase analysis techniques. Direct interaction with customers, complain handling procedures, conduct skill development programmes, collect customers feedback and recruit experienced professionals were identified as some of the existing strategies used for service consistency. Different customer expectations, employee turnover, communication errors and lack of customer experience about FM services were revealed as major issues for service consistency. Accordingly, the suggestions, including sharing information with each employee, improving decision making skills, developing customer care strategies and implementing better recruitment system, were proposed to overcome the identified issues of service consistency in FM service providing organisations in Sri Lanka.