Communicating service quality improvement: Another role for public relations

Public relations practitioners have struggled to become part of total quality management (TQM) teams in an era when companies have focused enormous effort on enhancing service quality as a competitive edge. TQM is a challenge to practitioners whose mentality and training leads them to focus on process instead of measurable outcomes and who are better prepared to defend the status quo than to abandon it for greener quality service pastures. This article combines public relations practice and TQM improvement stages to create a philosophy and set of strategies to assist practitioners' understanding of the challenges and response options available to them as part of improving service quality.