Have You Found the Missing Link?

Why do some service providers fall short of excellence?  What separates excellent providers from the average or baseline operators?  In this week’s article you’ll learn about the missing link that keeps most pet centers average.  Keep reading to find this missing link and move your operations to excellence!

Think about a business you truly love…one with great customer service and a product or service that you use frequently.   What words do you use to describe this business?  Why is it a favorite for you?  I’m willing to bet many of you thought of words like reliable, dependable, or consistent to describe this business.

Customers like consistency in products and in the delivery of services.  This is the reason franchises are successful…their brand is built on consistency of operations.  As a business owner, my biggest frustration and challenge was achieving consistency in my pet center’s services.  If you are like me you have written policies and procedures and have a formal staff training program so why is consistency so hard to achieve?

To me the answer was drift…staff would slowly drift away from following the written procedures.   Drift is not usually intentional. It’s just something that would happen gradually as one person found a “better way” of accomplishing a task.

So how do you prevent drift?  The answer is our missing link to service excellence…quality control (QC).  I realize many of you are thinking…we have checklists and still have drift!  Checklists are one tool in your quality control system and to be effective they do require staff accountability, which we’ll talk about next week.

The key to achieving excellence is having quality control for the right procedures.  Prioritize your systems and procedures and implement quality control for areas that are high risk for dog health and safety or client satisfaction.  Areas to consider include:

• Security of fencing and gates
• Preparation and use of cleaning products in pet areas
• Sanitation procedures
• Dog roll calls and physical checks
• Gate management
• Moving dogs between play areas
• Dog interaction and activity schedules
• Dispensing medication
• Feeding meals and treats
• Invoicing
• Inventory and return of personal belongings

For each area you need to decide which quality control tool will best ensure compliance with procedures.  Checklists are good for tasks that are performed 1 – 3 times per day and which are part of a specific job assignment.   An example is preparing the play areas prior to admitting dogs and tasks on the checklist may include:

• Perimeter fence check
• Gates closed and latched
• Cleaning tools and products prepared for day
• Play equipment checked to be in good repair
• Play yard checked for foreign objects that could be harmful to dogs

Performance audits are another quality control tool that are good for tasks that are performed multiple times throughout a day or on a schedule.  A supervising staff member can spend time auditing or observing staff members performing tasks on a regular basis and complete an audit form on their compliance.  Examples of procedures that could be audited include:

• Sanitation
• Gate management
• Moving dogs between play areas
• Dog activity schedules

One of my favorite assignments as a consultant was when I was asked to “spy” on a client’s staff.   My spy work was observing if they were using the dog leader skills they had been taught in Knowing Dogs.  I parked across the street from the outdoor play yards and watched the staff through binoculars.  My visits were random and not announced to anyone at the pet center.  While I observed the staff I made notes including time, dog description and behavior of dogs, and staff responses that concerned me.  Now a key part of my spy missions was also pointing out good and positive behaviors that the staff did implement from the training.  After an hour I met with the Daycare Manager and shared my specific notes and overall observations from the spy mission.

The quality of care in this center has improved as a result of the staff training and quality control audits.  This is a large center that has over 75 dogs per day in their playgroups.  Their dog incident rate has decreased tremendously and they reported to me on two separate months they had zero dog injuries or serious incidents.

Quality control is the missing link to achieving excellence and a key component in the Four E’s of Excellence guidebook. 

You invested a lot of time in creating solid procedures and training staff, but to achieve excellence you must have a quality control system implemented to eliminate “drift”.  A good QC system will ensure consistency and help you achieve designation as an Excellent Operator!