Qual Quant

DOI 10.1007/s11135-010-9424-7

RESEARCH NOTE

A Study on the application of 6-Sigma

on the enhancement of service quality of fitness club

Kuei-Mei Cheng · Chin-Hsien Hsu ·

Chin-Huang Huang

© Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011

Abstract The service industry plays an essential role in economic globalization and a
determining factor in strengthening industry’s competitiveness. Targeting fitness industry,
this study intends to explore ways to minimize customer complaints, understand customer
expectation, and enhance service quality by applying the five steps of 6-Sigma: (1) Defini-
tion; (2) Measurement; (3) Analysis; (4) Improvement; and (5) Control, to effectively solve
the root causes of customer complaints, raise customer satisfaction and minimize possible
future complaints.

Keywords Service industry · Fitness industry · Fitness club · Service quality ·

6-Sigma · Customer complaints

1 Introduction

The increasingly dense urban population, the short supply of sports and leisure space, and
the importance of leisure activities advocated by the government have generated a “Fitness
club boom” in recent years. To attract a wider variety of consumers and to gain a competi-
tive edge, fitness clubs as a whole are promoting a diverse programs including body-build-
ing, SPA therapy, sauna, ball games, cosmetology and skin-care, yoga, and aerobic dance,
and so on. Furthermore, health clubs are transforming themselves into customer-oriented
to strengthen service quality, elevate customers satisfaction, and create a customer-corpo-
rate win-win situation. Customer complaints usually result from the unfulfilled expecta-
tion customer experiences from service or product during various functional commercial

K.-M. Cheng (B) · C.-H. Huang

Department of Sport Management, National Taiwan College of Physical Education,
Taichung, Taiwan, R.O.C.
e-mail: kmaycheng@yahoo.com.tw; ccmei@ntcpe.edu.tw

C.-H. Hsu
Department of Recreation and Sports Management, National Chi-Yi University of Technology,
Taichung, Taiwan, R.O.C.

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activities, or the sensational or emotional reaction customer has in response to the perceived
dissatisfaction against his/her purchasing behavior. Parasuraman et al. (1985) suggest that
customer may sometimes voice complaints of dissatisfaction with certain part of the service
provided by the company, in spite of the satisfaction gained from the overall service quality.
Generally speaking, customer satisfaction ranking can affect the market share, total profits,
and words of mouth effect of the corporate, even plays an important factor in determining
the sustainable development of the corporate. Any enterprise will experience a decline in
customer’s overall satisfaction if it neglect or fails to solve the root cause of customer com-
plaints. In view of this, International Organization for Standardization (ISO) promulgated
in July 2004, ISO 10002-Guideline for Complaint Handling in Organization, as the norms
for global enterprises in handling customer complaints. Therefore, the main purpose of this
study is to explore ways to minimize customer complaints, understand customer expecta-
tion, and enhance service quality to effectively solve the root causes of customer complaints
existing in the fitness industry, to raise customer satisfaction and minimize possible future
complaints.
The overall root causes for customer complaints can be divided into three categories: (1)
Dissatisfaction with service; resulting from customer’s dissatisfaction with the low service
quality, poor service management and communication between customers and service per-
sonnel; (2) Dissatisfaction with the club site and facilities; caused by the messiness and old or
damaged equipments; (3) Dissatisfaction with discrepancy between reality and anticipated
benefits customers get from over exaggerated TV commercials, different recognitions on
contract, and the dishonest promise made by the sales personnel. According to Peter et al.’s
study (2000), many multi-nationals such as Motorola, GE, and Sony have all experienced
great effect through introducing the 5-step 6-Sigma into their management. Cases in point are:
1. GE increased a profit of USD 750,000,000 at final settlement in 1998 resulted from
adopting 6-Sigma, and related profit was predicted to reach up to USD 1,500,000,000
in the following 1999.
2. Motorola enjoys a 21% annual increase of stock price since adopting 6-Sigma.
An increasing number of scholars or industries are joining in the rank of researching
6-Sigma, concentrating on how to apply 6-Sigma to promote organizational performance
and/or product quality (Hoerl 2001; Han and Lee 2002; Linderman et al. 2003). This has
caused an extending application of 6-Sigma into the fields beyond industrial engineering;
hence, the study will apply 6-Sigma to explore the issue of improving customer complaints
and the service quality in fitness club industry.
The first step of 6-Sigma methodology is “Define”, namely, to reduce the frequency of
customer complaints. The next step is to define the measurement index and establish the
standard and method of “Measurement.” Then, by following the DMAIC mode of 6-Sigma
described by Michael (2002) and Pyzdek (2001) mode, and by taking cause-and-effect dia-
gram as the tool to “Analyze,” we move on to the 3rd step and analyze the causes that give rise
to the customer complaints. Based on the causes analyzed and taking the relationship matrix
diagram as the concept, an improvement team is formed following assignment of duties and
missions to each department, to achieve the target to “Improve” at step 4. Finally, the 5th step
of “Control,” based on the principle and concept of control chart, the study will establish a set
of modes to control and monitor the number of customer complaints. Through the process of
this approach, employees will be trained on a continuous basis on how to handle customer
complaints, and normalize the handling methods, so that the enterprises can promptly solve
any arising complaint and eventually increase customer satisfaction and cut down the number
of customer complaints.

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1.1 Definition of six sigma

The 6-Sigma was firstly adopted as a set of improvement approach in 1980, by Motorola
Company. Several other multi-internationals, such as GE and Sony followed suit and began to
introduce this improvement technique into their organizations. According to Michael (2002),
DMAIC, the main procedural steps of 6-Sigma are defined as follows:
Define: To define the problems and the project.
Measure: To measure the actual condition of performance.
Analyze: To analyze the causes of the problems.
Improve: To propose related countermeasures.
Control: To establish control mechanism to ensure the achieved precision and stability are
maintained.
Peter et al. (2000) suggested taking into consideration of customer demands when defining
problems, and uncovering the problems from customer demands. Service provided in this
way, he suggests, can meet customer demands, and win customer satisfaction and loyalty.

2 Define and measure

As mentioned before, consumers are continuously raising their demand for service quality
with their increasing level of knowledge and education. And also because each customer
has different characteristics, the occurrence of customer complaint is inevitable. However,
customer complaints, if left unattended or treated inappropriately, will lead to drop of cus-
tomers’ loyalty and speeding up customer loss. Schibrowsky and Lapidus (1994) pointed out
that to maintain a smooth business operation, a company tends to seek out a new customer
to fill in the vacancy a lost customer left; nevertheless, the expense invested in marketing
amounts approximately five times as large as those spent in maintaining said customer. Tax
et al. (1998) indicated that the effective steps a company takes in dealing with customer
complaints, can not only reduce customer loss, but also offset the tarnished corporate image
caused by negative criticism.

2.1 Define

By applying 6-Sigma, the 1st step of the study is to “Define” the problem as to decrease
the number of customer complaints. In general, customer will voice complaints if any of
the following conditions occurs: dissatisfaction with service, dissatisfaction with facilities,
or dissatisfaction with the promised benefits. Here, N is used to represent the total number
of customer complaints; apparently, N, as the random variable of attributes, may also be
regarded as the defects number the product possesses. Therefore, according to Montgomery
(2001), the attributes’ random variable N obeys Poisson (POIS) distribution, and the proba-
bility density function is:
e−λ λx
P(N = x) = , x = 1, 2, 3, . . .
x!
Parameter λ is the mean value and the variance, that is, λ = E(xi ) and λ = V ar (xi ).
Although cutting down customer complaints is of the most importance, it is inevitable that
customer will complain from time to time. To reach such goal, an up-limit T is set up for the
maximum number of customer complaints, based on the company’s self-expectation, number
of consumers owned, and the external competitive environment and conditions. The mean

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value and the variance of Poisson distribution coefficient are equal; however, the variance
between the numbers of customer complaint may vary greatly. Therefore, Hausman et al.
(1984) proposed negative binomial (NB) distribution to revise the problem of over expanded
dispersion. The log of the mean from Poisson model can be shown as follow:
log(E(xi )) = z i β + θi (1)
where, θi is the unobservable difference. We can take “z i β + θi ” at the right side of the equa-
tion as the random variable, and show the distribution of the number of customer complaints
under the conditional probability of θi with Poisson probability distribution; therefore, it can
be re-written as:
exp(−exp(z i β + θi )) exp(z i β + θi )n
P(xi |θi ) = (2)
x!
Suppose the unobservable heterogeneous error is θi , and exp(θi ) = vi , E(vi ) = 1; then, a
new NB model obeying Gamma distribution can be written as (Sarker and Surry 2004):
 v  xi
(xi + v) v λ
P(xi ) = (3)
(xi + 1)(v) v + λ v+λ
The expected value and the variance are λ and λ + λ2 /v respectively; v = a1 , then

V ar (xi |z i ) = λi + aλi2 (4)

when α = 0, the POIS model indicating the expected value equals to the variance. Therefore,
the suitable distribution mode may be tested before conducting the measurement.

2.2 Measure

Then, based on λ:, the average number of customer complaints, and T, the up-limit of cus-
tomer complaints, the measurement index used in the study is thus defined as follows:
λ
MIndex = × 100% (5)
T
We learn from the preceding equation that when the average number of customer complaints
equals to the up-limit of customer complaints, that is, when λ = T, then the measurement
index MIndex = 100%, indicating that the proprietor has reached its full capacity of customer
complaints; when the average number of customer complaints is greater than the up-limit of
customer complaints, that is, when λ>T, then the measurement index MIndex > 100%, indicat-
ing that the proprietor is overloaded with excessive customer complaints; when the average
number of customer complaints is less than the up-limit of customer complaints, namely,
when λ < T, then the measurement index MIndex < 100%, indicating that customer com-
plaints is within the proprietor’s capacity of tolerance. Obviously the measurement index
MIndex is the increasing function of the mean value and the variance of customer complaint.
The smaller value λ is, the smaller the mean value and the variance of the number of customer
complaints are, indicating a better service quality. Hence, the smaller the measurement index
MIndex is, the better the service quality. By adopting the measurement proposed by Chen
et al. (2002), we suppose that A company demands that the measurement index MIndex must
be smaller than the performance of customer complaint service quality f (0 < f < 1), then
the smaller the f value is, the stricter the demand for customer complaint service quality;
the bigger the f value the looser the demand for customer complaint service quality. We will
first describe the hypothesis for measurement as follows:

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H0 : MIndex ≤ f (good performance of customer complaint service quality)

Ha : MIndex > f (poor performance of customer complaint service quality.)
H0 is of null hypothesis, that is, when measurement index MIndex has a demand smaller than
or equal to the service quality performance parameter f, it satisfies the null hypothesis, and
it also means the service quality meets the demand; otherwise, it satisfies the alternative
hypothesis of Ha , indicating the service quality fails the demand.

2.3 The uniformly minimum variance unbiased estimator of the measurement index
and the procedures of measurement

Then, the study uses the uniformly minimum variance unbiased estimator of the measurement
index MIndex as the measurement statistic. Uniformly minimum variance unbiased estimator
refers to the mathematical formula of the smallest variance in all unbiased estimators. The
definition is shown as follows:
N
M̂index = × 100% (6)
T
 
k
N = i=1 x i /k is the sample mean of the number of customer complaints. We can
easily derive the following mean value and the variance of the uniformly minimum variance
unbiased estimator:
λ
E( M̂index ) = × 100% (7)
T
Mindex
V ar ( M̂index ) = (8)
kT
Suppose, we calculate from observation of the random sample, and get the value of test
statistic as M̂index =w, and calculate P-value of the measurement index shown as follows:
 
P − value = P M̂index ≥ w|Mindex = f (9)
   
Because E M̂index = Mindex and V ar M̂index = MkT index
, therefore, we can assume:
√  
kT M̂index − Mindex
Z= √ (10)
Mindex
when the sample size is large enough, according to Central Limit 
Theorem, random variable Z

is close to standard normal distribution. Hence, P − value = P M̂index ≥ w|Mindex = f
can be rewritten as follows:
 √ 
kT (w − f )
P − value = P Z ≥ √ (11)
f
Based on the above-mentioned theories, the procedures of 6-Sigma measurement steps are
set up as follows:
(1) Choose the appropriate probability distribution.
(2) Calculate the index’s estimate value M̂index = w according to the number of samples
k.
(3) Select f value and calculate P-value, and then compare with the determined significant
level α (generally speaking, α = 0.05 or 0.01).

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(4) Judge whether the service quality meets the demand; the method is as follows:
(a) If P-value ≥ α, the service quality meets the standard.
(b) If P-value ≤ α, the service quality fails to meet the standard.

3 Analyze

After defining the problem and establishing the standard and method of measurement, the
study will follow Pyzdek (2001) mode, and take cause-and-effect diagram as the tool for
Step 3 “Analyze.” As described before, the increasing number of competitors in the market
results in higher service quality demanded by the customers. The most direct and effective
approach to upgrade company’s service quality is by targeting at handling customer com-
plaints. Among all the factors that may give rise to customer complaint, the study attempts,
based on cause-and-effect diagram, to analyze four constructs: personnel, facilities, commu-
nication and anticipated benefits respectively (Fig. 1):
Personnel: The personnel of a fitness club can be divided into the coach department, the busi-
ness department, and the marketing department. A coach with ample professional knowledge
on sports instruction and equipment usage, and with patience and friendliness can provide
the customers with correct, safe, and efficient/effective instructions, amiable service attitude,
promote customer satisfaction with sports courses and teaching skill, and eventually min-
imize customer complaints. The marketing and sales personnel should strictly observe the
occupational ethics of sincerity and honesty. Personnel who put personal achievement over
the overall benefits of the company by making irresponsible promises to the customer will
cause future disputes. The counter personnel should pay attention to the service attitude to
heighten customer satisfaction and reduce the occurrence of customer complaints.

Communication Personnel

Customer and Professional

counter personnel knowledge
Service
Customer and attitude
coach
Manager and
employee Occupational
ethics

Customer
complaint

Contract
Sport Sanitary
facilities
equipments
Advertisement
Oral Parking lot
consent Lounge

Anticipated
benefits Facilities

Fig. 1 Cause and effect diagram of fitness club service quality

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Enhancement of service quality of fitness club

Facilities: The facilities include sports facilities, parking lot, lounge, and sanitary equip-
ments. The quantity, diversification, comfort, and safety of sports facilities are essential to
how sports courses are carried out. To offer the customers a good sports environment, sports
facilities should at least contain aerobic dance classroom, yoga classroom, SPA pool, ball
game courts, and body-building area, and so forth. Parking lot design should consider the
location, space, lightings, safe management, and the non-barrier space etc. The lounge is the
venue where customers may engage in social activities and rest, therefore, it must incorporate
the concepts of comfort, quietness, spaciousness, elegance, and good ambient/natural light,
and meanwhile, provides clean meals and beverages. As for the sanitary facilities, the key
points for consideration are the quantity, cleanness, air ventilation, and adequate supply of
washing/bathing articles.
Communication: As the frontline player of the team, counter personnel not only must have
an ample understanding of the fitness club, but also must have a good communication and
expression skill, as well as patience to avoid providing inferior service quality to the custom-
ers. Coach’s ability of communication and expression affects the teaching quality and the
customers’ safe use of the equipments. Poor communication skills will influence customer
satisfaction with teaching and the possible injury, resulting in grumble or filing complaint.
Company policy and goal is usually transmitted to the customers top down from manager,
through store manager to employees. Any misinformation during the transmission process
will cause misconception at the customer end and discrepancy in legal rights recognition
between the contractory parties, and eventually customer grumbles.
Anticipated benefits: A fitness club may make its promises in the form of written contract,
advertisement, or oral consent. The written contract should be produced in a reasonable and
legible format followed by an open and transparent explanation. A poorly structured contract
will easily lead both contractory parties to generate discrepancy in their acknowledgment
of the terms and conditions. Advertisement shall be based on facts, and contains no exag-
geration just for the purpose of wooing the customers. Company image will be tarnished if
any consequential lawsuit or disputes arising out of untrue advisement content. Oral promise
made by the marketing and sales personnel shall not exceed the scope authorized by the
company; otherwise, company liability, except customer complaints, will be involved once
any exaggeration or untruthfulness is exposed.
We have learned that the four major root causes for customer complaint are personnel,
facilities, anticipated benefits, and communication. With each department of a certain fitness
club as cross-section, and by introducing Quality Function Deployment Diagram, the study
will now analyzes the correlation between each department (Table 1). Then, improvement
strategy and control methods will be set up on the basis of individual department.

4 Improve and control

Marketing Department:

Personnel:
To strengthen the personnel’s orientation training, to promote the personnel’s recognition of
the products; and to provide regular marketing workshops and marketing contests to eventu-
ally intensify the marketing personnel’s professional ability.
Communication:

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Table 1 Correlation coefficient matrix analysis

Sector Body-Building Dept. Dept. of General Affairs Marketing Dept.

Cause and effect

Personnel   
Facilities  ◦ ◦
Communication   
Anticipated benefits   
 refers to direct relevance; ◦ refers to indirect relevance

Customers’ cognition of the products is usually affected by the marketing and sales per-
sonnel. Besides enhancing the marketing and sales personnel’s cognition on the rights and
obligations of the customers and the fitness club, the marketing and sales personnel’s inter-
personal management and self-management, conversational skill, and the repartee should be
reinforced. If necessary, product presentation may also be held to allow direct communication
between customers and the executives.
Anticipated benefits:
To enhance the marketing and sales personnel’s cognition on the rights and obligations of the
customers and the fitness club, avoid exaggerated and untruthful advertisement, and impose
penalties in accordance with the company’s rewards and penalties system on personnel mak-
ing oral promise(s) to the customers beyond company’s authorization to lower the number
of customer complaints.
Department of General Affairs:
Personnel:
To familiarize the personnel with the check in and check out operations, phone answering
skill, environment introduction, handling of customer complaints and reservation process to
ensure a stabile service quality.
Communication:
To strengthen the counter personnel’s emotion management and training of deportment, and
maintain a cheerful and friendly attitude; furthermore, the counter personnel should memo-
rize the name and title of club members, extend amiable greetings, and pay attention to the
attitude when answering the phone to offer the customers a sense of respect.
Body-Building Department:
Personnel:
The club coach should be selected from those with related educational background, profes-
sional certificate, and of good conduct; regular participation in the related on-the-job training
and timely renewal of professional certificate are also requirements to elevate the professional
capability.
Facilities:
The club should conduct regular check and maintenance on all sports facilities, post instruc-
tion and danger signs, and purchase of new sports equipment should be made to maintain
customers’ safety and rights and interests.
Communication:
Before conducting a class, the coach should introduce himself/herself to the customers,
explain the course content, the teaching method/style, and the desired achievements, and
understand customers’ basic data and health conditions.
Anticipated benefits:

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Coach should preside the course on time, follow the announced time schedule, no switch of
course or absent without cause should be allowed; and shall conduct the course in accordance
with the announced course content.
According to the above-mentioned improvement method and strategy, the study defines
the problem, establishes the standard and method of measurement, and then uses the mea-
surement method proposed in step 2 to insure that the outcome of improvement conforms
to the required criteria. If they have tallied with the demands, it can be used as standard
to control and monitor. If they do not accord with the requirements, we can enter step 3 to
continue analyze the causes of customer complaints, and keep discovering more advanced
improvement method and strategy until the demands are met.

5 Conclusion

In a market situation where new entrant of competitors are increasing and the service quality
customers demand is getting higher, the fitness industry is facing a tough challenge of how to
reduce customer complaints and boost customer satisfaction in a timely and effective manner.
The study applies the five steps of 6-Sigma as the improvement method. step 1, Define, that
is, to reduce the number of customer complaints; step 2, to define the measurement index with
the construction error number, and establish the standard and method of measurement. By
following Pyzdek (2001) mode and taking cause-and-effect diagram as the tool of analysis
at step 3, to analyze the causes that produce customer complaints. Then, based on the causes
analyzed by cause-and-effect diagram, and by means of the concept of Quality Function
Deployment diagram to assign responsibility to each department, and organize the improve-
ment team to accomplish the improvement target at step 4. At step 5, to use the measurement
method put forward in step 2 to insure the improvement method and strategy proposed in
step 4 meet the demands. If they have conformed to the requirements, they can be taken
as the standards to control and monitor. Finally, by adopting this method, the researchers
hope fitness club proprietors can decrease the number of customer complaints efficiently and
promote the service quality to achieve sustainable management.

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