Editor’s note: Robert Brass is president and co-founder of Development II, Inc., a Woodbury, Conn., research firm.
George Kerns is the senior executive in charge of Network Operations at GTE Internetworking (GTEI), Cambridge, Mass. His organization is responsible for the installation, maintenance and operation of the Internet services that GTE provides for business customers. These consist primarily of three major ISP (Internet service provider) services: Internet Advantage, Site Patrol and Web Advantage. Internet Advantage provides customers with an Internet connection via a router and a dedicated line. Site Patrol is a monitored Internet security service whose function is to monitor and intercept unauthorized external access. Web Advantage is Web hosting for the provision of Web site services.
Kerns has a passion for quality. He has focused the efforts of his organization toward the continual increase in the level of quality and customer satisfaction. While many companies have an integrated process to increase the satisfaction of the customer and to improve the quality of the product or service, few have attained the level of success that has been reached by GTEI in less than two years.
The ongoing improvement is achieved through a twofold process: first, an external customer satisfaction survey and analysis technique that acts as the "meter" for the activity and, second, an internal process that uses this information in a highly disciplined way to provide transactional and systemic corrective actions.
To illustrate, we’ll look at GTEI’s Internet Advantage service. The coordinating department throughout the installation and operation of the Internet connection provided through Internet Advantage is called the Network Operations Center (NOC), part of Network Operations organization. Director of Customer Provisioning Steve Zajac’s group is responsible for the initial installation of the...