A Question of Quality
Dedication to quality is a demanding choice that positions a supplier at the top end of the market: customers expect. One company that made that choice is Three Q Catering. They reached the top, slipped and climbed the mountain again.
Cora Barnes, Managing Director, Three Q Catering who recently won the prestigious Dublin City Female Entrepreneur of the Year Award shares her experience. Ask any manager in the catering industry to list their biggest headaches and a cent to a € the answer will come back: “Staff”. Hiring and retaining good staff can be a real nightmare.
Sourcing good temporary staff can bring on a migraine. Too often managers are under great pressure to fill a post because the need to supply the service is great. Back in 1999, three friends working in a general recruitment agency, Cora Barnes, Cathy O'Reilly and Gerry Lynch, had an idea. “We spotted a gap in the marketplace for a quality recruiter for the catering industry that would concentrate solely on this market,” recalls Cora. “While three other catering recruitment specialists were in operation, none of them were pursuing the temporary contracts market and were providing only permanent placement services. The three partners have experience of working in the industry and were familiar with client needs.
The name
Three Q Catering spells out the company’s founding mission: To offer a Quality service, with Qualified Staff in the Quantity clients require. Overcoming teething problems As is often the case, lending institutions are unwilling to back an idea that is not supported by a solid business plan. “When we set up in 1999 we could not get funding from the lending institutions,” says Cora. “I was just four months out of college, neither of my business partners had tangible assets and accessing finance was near impossible.” Fortunately help was at hand, initially in the form of Inner City Enterprise, First Step and a little later on from Dublin City Enterprise Board.
“Inner City Enterprise assisted me to develop our five year business plan to present to First Step. Through First Step we were successful in gaining an interest free First Step loan in conjunction with Bank of Ireland. Dublin City Enterprise Board provided an Equipment Grant that enabled us to replace a borrowed computer with two new computers,” says Cora Barnes.
In their continuing dedication to quality, Cora, Cathy and Gerry place great emphasis on training. “We were the first company to develop in-house and induction training for staff working on various contracts,” she explains. “We have coupled this training with recognised courses from FAS, Failte Ireland and FETAC approved suppliers to extend the range of training we can offer our temps and our perms. Dublin City Enterprise Board has assisted us with ongoing training courses from Accounts to Time management. We find it very beneficial to send our office staff on these day release skill building courses. Our standardised training programmes for all our staff were also imperative for our company’s achievement of the Excellence Through People Award in 2005.
“I, myself, got involved in the Dublin City Women’s Network in 2005 and have found it very influential in my approach to business. I have made some valuable contacts and met some interesting people who have rekindled my passion for my business,” she adds. With ten permanent and a similar number of temporary staff, Three Q Catering has come a long way in seven years. The company’s client base is diverse and include top organisations including banks, hospitals, hotels, restaurants and community care centres. Flexibility is essential. The service operates 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. If informed by 10 p.m. that a a hotel needs a chef for breakfast the next morning, Three Q must be able to respond.
Fight-back
Mistakes occur and it is management’s response that is crucial in determining if the damage caused is permanent or a lesson learned leading to future success. For Three Q Catering it was the latter. “A candidate was supplied to a contract. Unfortunately, the candidate did not reach the standard that the company would expect from a primary supplier, this resulted in the loss of a six figure contract,” explains Cora Barnes. “Gaps in our procedures resulted in this six figure contract being cancelled. We took a long hard look at ourselves and recruited a dedicated HR Manager to develop, implement and monitor standard operating procedures for all company activities. In late 2005, were reinstated as one of the top preferred suppliers and continue to hold that position,” adds Cora Barnes. “It has taught me to never be complacent about client satisfaction or service improvement.” SHARING EXPERIENCE The bare facts of this story, while highlight the crucial importance of quality control and good customer relations, whet an appetite that can only be satisfied with how-to-do-it knowledge. Cora Barnes has, clearly, built up a wealth of this practical knowledge. We asked her to share it with us.
She kindly took the time to answer our questions.
Q. How important are customer relations/quality control in a service business ?
Cora Barnes: Few rules are more widely quoted in business today than the 80/20 Rule (the Pareto's Principle), which states that 80% of your sales come from just 20% of your customer base. To this end we feel that strong customer relations have been at the cornerstone of our success. We are a company providing a specialist service in a niche market and so we need to ensure that our quality control means that companies will come back to us for repeat business. The partnership approach has been very successful with applicants and with companies - we treat them with respect and ask the same and all three will be happy. Client gets a good candidate, candidate gets to work with a firm that respects them and Three Q continues to run a profitable business. Repeat business in the service industry is only possible once your client feels they have gotten a quality service at the right price so I would say that customer relations and quality control go hand in hand.
Q. What you did to improve customer service/quality control when you ran into difficulty?
Cora Barnes: We reviewed our policies and then our activities - we found that the policies were sound but their application and monitoring had not been systematic. We had been talking to unit managers but not to area managers, we had been advising certain clients of changes and improvements and not others. We found that we did not have a standard operating procedure in place for a lot of our routine but very important activities. This meant that each individual team member was interpreting what they saw was suitable and acceptable rather than us having set the standard for them to work too. This is where our dedicated HR manager came into place - we would have an identifiable person in the team who would review practices, set up SOP's and who would monitor their implementation. To improve customer service satisfaction we entered into dialogue with our clients - we showed them what we were doing at that time and listened to what they needed us to do. Where possible we amended our procedures to mirror their own.
© Dublin City Enterprise Board 2006. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in whole or part without the permission from the D.C.E.B.
More information