Service Quality Enhancement Tool - Research Findings

Research Findings

Barriers to widespread adoption of a training culture derive from sector characteristics, SMTE factors and the nature of training tools currently available. Determining SMTEs behaviours and attitudes toward service quality training is the first step toward developing more suitable training tools for the sector.

Research undertaken by STCRC in developing this tool indicated that:

• Online delivery format and CD-ROM were reported as the two strongly preferred options for delivery of training content.
• There is a mismatch between aspirational or strategic goals and capabilities of SMTEs, thus indicating that desirable goals are likely to be impeded by a reality check within the business. 
• This aspect is reinforced by the finding that nearly all respondents were seeking some growth for the business.
• However, service quality improvements, or service quality training, were not seen as a vehicle to achieve such growth.
• A moderate degree of business planning and organisation was evident from the results.
• These results indicated that, if seen as relevant, SMTEs do engage in planning or review activities. A large emphasis was placed on finance/accounts roles in SMTEs.
• Owner/managers reported low levels of customer service training activities.
• As the numbers of employees in the SMTE increased the level of customer service training activity increased. 
• SMTEs were able to nominate their favourite training/business performance improvement activity over the past 12 months. The highest ranked activity was a seminar-based activity (47.5%) while the remaining delivery options were books (12%), meetings (11.5%), courses (10.5%), magazines (8.5%), conferences (6.5%) and websites (3%).

In summary, the ideal training tool appears to have the following characteristics:

• Highly relevant to business needs;
• Provides new information;
• Informative (not trivial);
• Credible source;
• Easy to access and understand; and
• Has a social component.

This finding also fits with the results from preferred sources of information questions in the research. That is, the best value training/business improvement activity was positively rated by friends and associates. Characteristics of such advice can generally be seen as friendly, comfortable, inexpensive, social, specific and knowledgeable. Such sources also respond to specific requests for information. In contrast, the least valued activities tended to be associated with more formal activities associated with government sources.


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