Design for Quality (D4Q) is a consulting firm that specializes in the design and implementation of quality management programs for service companies and organizations. It has had success designing quality programs for retail stores and catalogue order services. Recently D4Q was approached by a catalogue order company, BookTek Media, Inc., with the offer of a job. BookTek sells books, CDs, DVDs, and videos through its mail- order catalogue operation. BookTek has decided to expand its service to the Internet. BookTek is experienced in catalogue telephone sales and has a successful quality-management program in place. Thus, the company is confident that it can process orders and make deliveries on time with virtually no errors.
A key characteristic of BookTek’s quality management program is the company’s helpful, courteous, and informative phone representatives. These operators can answer virtually any customer question about BookTek’s products, with the help of an information system. Their demeanor toward customers is constantly monitored and graded. Their telephone system is so quick that customers rarely have to wait for a representative to assist them. However, the proposed Internet ordering system virtually eliminates direct human contact with the customer since there will be no human contact, BookTek is concerned about how it will be able to make customers feel that they are receiving high-quality service. Furthermore, the company is unsure how its employees can monitor and evaluate the service to know if the customer thinks it is good or poor The primary concern is how to make customers feel good about the company in such an impersonal, segregated environment. At this point BookTek is unconcerned with costs; management simply wants to develop the highest-quality, friendliest website possible. D4Q indicated that it would like to take on the job, but while it is familiar with BookTek’s type of catalogue order system, ft is relatively unfamiliar with how things are ordered on the Internet for this kind of retail book business. It suggested that its first order of business might be to investigate what other companies were doing on the Internet. Help D4Q develop a quality management plan for BookTek. Include in your plan the quality dimensions and characteristics of an Internet ordering system specifically for BookTek% products, suggestions for achieving customer satisfaction, ways to measure defective service, and how to evaluate the success of the order system in terms of quality.