Service Quality

How do you Manage Service Quality
Service Quality - Introduction
What is Service Quality; and its Importance
Service Quality involves comparisons of expectations with the actual performance.
As per Lewis and Booms “Service Quality is a measure of how well the service delivered matches customer expectations.”
Delivering service quality means meeting the requirements of customer expectations on a consistent basis.
The service firms can use the service quality in maintaining competitive advantage and the customers can use the service quality for quality differentiation.
Organizations are becoming increasingly aware of the importance of quality in maintaining competitive advantage.
During the last decade, total quality management has been a buzzword for all business.
Measuring quality in services is not a simple task since they are intangible and cannot be stored.
Generally in services the evaluation of quality is made during the service delivery process which mainly comprises of an encounter between the customer and service provider.
How do you Measure Service Quality?
Managers must measure service quality to identify service quality gaps.
Thus, factors such as the type of gap, where it exists and the remedial actions to be taken depend on measuring the service quality.
Measurement of service quality includes soft and hard measures.
Hard Measures
Hard measures relate to those characteristics of a service that can be counted, timed or measured through audits.
They refer to operational processes or outcomes and include data indicating service response times, failure rates and delivery costs.
They use control charts.
Soft Measures
Soft measures are those that cannot be easily observed and must be collected by talking to customers, employees or others.
Soft standards provide direction, guidance and feedback to employees regarding how to achieve customer satisfaction.
A proper feedback from customers can make a long run change in the attitude of the employees and the company
Soft measures include the following;
Ongoing surveys of customers by telephone or mail
A customer advisory panel to offer feedback and advice on service performance
Employee surveys and panels to determine barriers to providing better service and suggestions for improvement
How do you Improve Service Quality?
Identifying quality determinants
• Managing evidence
• Educating customers
• Developing a quality culture
• Automating service
Tools to analyze and address service quality problems
• Fishbone diagram
(cause and effect analysis)
• Blueprinting
• Pareto chart
• Total quality management (TQM)
• Six Sigma
Zone of Tolerance and Improving Service Quality
Services are heterogeneous. Thus, performance may vary across providers, across employees from the same provider and even with the same service employee.
The extent to which customers recognize and are willing to accept this variation is called the zone of tolerance.
If services drop below adequate service, the minimum level considered acceptable - customers will be frustrated with the company and image will be damaged.
If service performance is outside the zone of tolerance at the top and where performance exceeds desired service customers will be very pleased and probably quite surprised as well.
You might consider the zone of tolerance as the range or window in which customers do not particularly notice service performance.
When it falls outside the range either very low or very high, the service gets the customers attention in either a positive or negative way.
Zone of Tolerance - Example
Consider the service an airline passenger receives from the ticket counter when checking luggage.
Most customers hold a range of acceptable times for this service encounter - probably somewhere between five and ten minutes.
If a customer enters the line and finds sufficient airline personnel at their counters to serve her in the first two or three minutes, she may judge the service as excellent.
On the other hand, if a customer has to wait in line for fifteen minutes, she begins to grumble, and stares at the employee behind the counters marked “counter not open”.
The longer the wait is outside the zone of tolerance, the more frustrated she becomes.
This video is on Service quality and it has the following sub-topics.
Time Stamps
0:21 - How do you Manage Service Quality
7:41 - GAP Model
12:01 - SERQUAL Model