Task before Service Companies

 The primary tasks before Service Companies

in addition to managing the intrinsic service
characteristics described earlier is :
 1) Increasing competitive differentiation
 2) Service Quality
 3) Productivity.
 Service Quality

 Better service quality can be obtained through

a mix of improving access, communication,
competence, courtesy, credibility, reliability,
responsiveness, security, tangibles,
understanding the customer.
 The Service Edge

 In today’s world, companies which succeed have

what is known as the service edge over the
competition. Such companies have succeeded in
creating Distinctive Service. It is important to
understand that creating anything is a willful
management act- an act of leadership.
What is it that successful companies do to
achieve customer delight ?
 Moment of truth

 Jan Carlzon ,CEO of SAS exposited the concept of

managing the customer’s moments of truth- the
transactions the customer has with the organization.

 “A moment of truth occurs any time the customer

comes in contact with some aspect of the organization
and uses that opportunity to judge the quality of
service the organization is providing.”
Five specific operating principles for
building and managing extraordinary
levels of customer satisfaction and
loyalty or what we call customer delight
are :
1. Listening, understanding and responding to Customers

2. Defining Superior Service and establishing a service

strategy

3. Setting Standards and measuring Performance

4. Selecting training and empowering Employees to work for

the Customer

5. Recognizing and rewarding Accomplishment

 Summary of Model
 The customer Gap : Gap 5 - Difference between customer
expectations and perceptions

Contributed to by:

 Provider Gap 1 : Not knowing what customers expect

 Provider Gap 2 : Not selecting the right service designs and

standards

 Provider Gap 3 :Not delivering to service designs and standards

 Provider Gap 4 : Not matching performance to promises

 The Basis of the Servqual Model

 The Gaps
 The Key Service Dimensions
 Causes & Solutions to Gaps
 What are the Servqual Gaps?

 Gap 1: The difference between management perceptions of

what customers expect and what customers really do expect -
is it large?

 Gap 2: The difference between management perceptions and

service quality specifications - the standards gap ?

Gap 3: The difference between service quality specifications
and actual service delivery - are standards consistently met?

 Gap 4: The difference between service delivery and what is

communicated externally - are promises made consistently
fulfilled?

 The Customer Gap
 Gap 5: The difference between what customers
expect of a service and what they actually
receive
 Expectations are made up of past experience,
word-of-mouth and needs/wants of customers
 Measurement is on the basis of two sets of
statements in groups according to the five key
service dimensions

The Five Key Service Dimensions
ASSURANCE - a combination of the following :

 Competence - having the requisite skills and knowledge

 Courtesy - politeness, respect, consideration and

friendliness of contact staff

 Credibility - trustworthiness, believability and honesty of

staff

 Security - freedom from danger, risk or doubt

 TANGIBLES - the appearance of physical
facilities, equipment, personnel and
information material

 RELIABILITY - the ability to perform the

service accurately and dependably

 RESPONSIVENESS - the willingness to help

customers and provide a prompt service
 EMPATHY - a combination of the
following:

 Access (physical and social) - approachability and

ease of contact

 Communication - keeping customers informed in a

language they understand and really listening to
them

 Understanding the customer - making the effort to

get to know customers and their specific needs
Reasons for gaps
 Reasons for gaps

GAP 1 - not knowing what customers expect

 Lack of a marketing orientation

 Inadequate upward communication (from contact

staff to management)

 Too many levels of management

GAP 2 - the wrong service quality standards

 Inadequate commitment to service quality

 Lack of perception of feasibility - ‘it cannot be

done’

 Inadequate task standardization

 The absence of goal setting

 GAP 3 - the service performance gap

 role ambiguity and role conflict - unsure of what your

responsibility is and how it fits with others
 poor employee or technology fit - the wrong person
or system for the job
 inappropriate supervisory control or lack of perceived
control - too much or too little control
 lack of teamwork
 GAP 4 - when promises made do not match
actual delivery

 inadequate horizontal communication - between

departments or services

 a propensity to overpromise
 Servqual Data - How Useful is it?

 We can assess service quality from the customer’s

perspective

 We can track customer expectations and perceptions

over time and the discrepancies between them

 We can compare a set of Servqual scores against

those of competitors or best practice examples
 We can compare the expectations and perceptions of
different customer groups

 We can assess the expectations and perceptions of

internal customers - eg other departments or services
we deal with.
Conceptual Framework for Railway Passenger
Service Quality and Passenger Satisfaction
tangibles

reliability
expected service
responsiveness desired service
zone of
assurances tolerance
perceived
adequate
empathy service quality
service
perceived
convenience service
overall
passenger
comfort satisfaction

speed
 Findings

Assurance, Responsiveness and Empathy had

significant effects on overall service quality.
Assurance was the dominant predictor of
overall customer satisfaction.
 In reality, it is unlikely to fulfil all the
ideal service quality requirements from
the customers.

 Therefore it is necessary for the

managers to manage customer
expectation by the adequacy level of
expectation so as to widen the zone of
tolerance (Kettinger and Lee, 1997).
Finally, the zones of tolerance provide
information about what areas and attributes
that are need to improve but not how to
improve them. Future research on finding,
examining and measuring the determinants
of expectation would add value in
monitoring service quality.
 Companies with a Service Edge
 Better understand and affect service customer
behavior

 Create marketing messages that effectively

highlight service quality dimensions that
consumers value

 Achieve loyalty through greater attention to

customer feelings in service encounters
 Develop innovative and profitable loyalty programs

 Benefit from yield management and capacity

utilization techniques

 Manage and motivate service marketers for maximum

customer and employee satisfaction

 Learn how to interpret customer satisfaction measures

 Successfully recover and learn from service failures