Dimensions of Quality

Quality, what is quality? Quality in today’s world is depicted on how well a product or service meets a customer’s needs. Chili’s Corporation as well as Brinker pride themselves on quality when it comes to food and service. When looking at quality, we look at the four dimensions of quality, quality of design, quality of conformance, abilities, and field service.
Quality of design is set before the product is even produced, and decided upon by the marketing and research teams, who analyze customer buying and habits. Currently Chili’s is focusing on great quality food for a lower price. Chili’s just last month released a 10 for $7 deal; this is 10 food products for under $7. This conveniences the customer, and allows the corporation to stay busy during the hard economic times. Chili’s assessed the customer’s need for a lower priced product, and rolled out the 10 for 7 deal. By doing this customer have been coming in non-stop ordering because it is convenient for them to feed the family during the economic hard times.
Chilis will also be releasing its summer craze drink; the Mojito will be rolled out next week, this product is an immediate response to the customer’s needs. Many customers have requested mojitos throughout the corporation, and to answer that call and to compete with competitors Chili’s will put out the Classic Mojito, the Peach Mojito, and the Strawberry Mojito next week.
The problem with constantly pleasing the customer is that when you roll out a new product you usually take away an old product. I believe that Chili’s should stay focused on changing the products up, but it should be able to produce an older product if someone was to order it. Of recent Chili’s has expired the Blooming Onion (a very popular dish), The Classic Quesadilla, and Habenero Wings, and Ribs. Some of these items were favorites of customers and by not being able to make them in the store any more Chili’s is not listening to their customer and is at risk of losing some customers.
Quality of conformance is producing a product to meet the specifications; does Chili’s have the staff to serve the customers what the design has promised? Chili’s staff is highly trained in what it is to be a chili head (an employee at chili’s). Each server at the establishment goes through a 2 week training process in order to provide the best service to the customer. As well as the providing the initial training process, Chili’s has a mandatory meeting with all employees every three months in order to update all servers on menu items and suggestive selling.
Conformance is not only service, it is the availability, reliability, and maintainability of the product as well. When it comes to availability, chili’s does its best to provide the customer with whatever product they would like from the menu. The problem that Chili’s comes across here is that they are not always able to predict how much of an individual product will sell; because of this there are many times that the individual store will run out of a product. By not having the product available, Chili’s has what we call a down time. Chili’s wants to reduce the down time as much as possible, meaning Chili’s wants to have all products to serve at all times this way there is no down time, or time they do not have a requested dish. By reducing the down time they increase their availability and service.
In order to fix such down time problems each store should have communication with the other stores in their district and if it notices a product is getting close or below its safety stock it can pick up more of that product immediately from another location in order to supply the demand from its individual store. This way the store is able to provide the customer with any product they want all the time. It should also have some of the older products in stock in order to please some of the customers who enjoy some of the older classics, like the Chili’s Blooming onion.
Chili’s does its best to work without any failure, but it is hard to be perfect in such a busy and demanding work place. If there ever is a problem with food or service a manager is immediately sent to the customer. In this meeting the manager will assess the situation and depending on the seriousness, he or she will make a decision on how to handle the problem. The product may get comped (taken off the bill); the customer may be offered a discount on the bill, or even the meal entirely for free. Chili’s does its best to keep customers happy and returning.
By doing the above Chili’s repairs the problems and keeps a customer coming back. Chili’s has a high degree of maintainability and attempts to fix all problems as soon as they are presented. This is known as the companies maintainability, this refers to the ability to restore a product after failure; the faster the repair the happier the customer.
Along with maintainability comes Chili’s field service, field service represents warranty and repair or replacement of the product after it has been sold. Field service relates to the promptness and honesty a problem is solved with. This is very important to a product because this is what keeps a customer returning after failure. Chili’s try’s to have a long MTBF (mean time before failure), because the longer the MTBF the less problems they would have to deal with. If problems do exist though they are handled immediately, and it is made sure that the customer does not leave unhappy.
“Welcome to Chili’s” is the slogan and it means welcome to our house, welcome to the neighborhood, the friendly environment and the great service. Chili’s quality management system that is similar to the standards set in the ISO 9000. The principles of the ISO 9000 focus on customers, leadership, involvement, approach and continual improvement. Chili’s main focus is always the customer, “Customer first”, and “The customer is always right” is consistently stated at Chili’s. They pride themselves on manager leadership and team approaches to sales and the work environment. An example of this would be Chili’s annual margarita madness, every summer each individual store breaks its staff up into four teams and for a four month period whatever team sells the most margaritas wins a prize. Each team has a team leader, who is supposed to be used to motivate the team and to make trades with other staff members.
Chili’s set itself to the ISO 9000 standards and follows those standards pretty well. We believe that Chili’s need to work on setting a better safety stock or being able to have better communication with stores in its district in order to have all the supplies and food listed on the menu. Chili’s frequently runs out of certain products, and take a risk in losing customers by not having those products when they are requested. We also believe that Chili’s should allow for customers to order some of the older products off the menu. By supplying what the customer wants when the customer wants it, it will cut back on down time an allow the company to profit more.