Very important topic for any mba student in 3rd semester for marketing.

1. Service Quality
BY-Amit Tiwari

2. What Is Service Quality?

3. Different Perspectives of Service
Quality
Transcendent:
Product-based:
User-based:
Manufacturing-
based:
Value-based:
Quality = Excellence. Recognized only through experience
Quality is precise and measurable
Quality lies in the eyes of the beholder
Quality is in conformance to the firm’s developed
specifications
Quality is a trade-off between price and value

4. Components of Quality:
Service-based
Tangibles: Appearance of physical elements
Reliability: Dependable and accurate performance
Responsiveness: Promptness; helpfulness
Assurance: Competence, courtesy, credibility,
security
Empathy: Easy access, good communication,
understanding of customer

5. The Gaps Model—A Conceptual Tool to
Identify and Correct Service Quality
Problems

6. Seven Service Quality Gaps
Customer experience
relative to expectations
1. Knowledge Gap
2. Standards Gap
3. Delivery Gap
5. Perceptions Gap
7. Service Gap
Customer needs and
expectations
6. Interpretation Gap
4. Internal Communications
Gap
MANAGEMENT
CUSTOMER
4.
Customer perceptions of
service execution
Management definition of
these needs
Translation into
design/delivery specs
Execution of
design/delivery specs
Advertising and sales
promises
Customer interpretation of
communications

7. Prescriptions for Closing the
Seven Service Quality Gaps (1)
1. Knowledge gap: Learn what customers expect
– Understand customer expectations
– Improve communication between frontline staff and
management
– Turn information and insights into action
2. Standards gap: Specify SQ standards that reflect
expectations
– Set, communicate, and reinforce customer-oriented
service standards for all work units
– Measure performance and provide regular feedback
– Reward managers and employees

8. Prescriptions for Closing the
Seven Service Quality Gaps (2)
3. Delivery gap: Ensure service performance meets
standards
– Clarify employee roles
– Train employees in priority setting and time management
– Eliminate role conflict among employees
– Develop good reward system
4. Internal communications gap: Ensure that
communications promises are realistic
– Seek comments from frontline employees and operations
personnel about proposed advertising campaigns
– Get sales staff to involve operations staff in meetings with
customers
– Ensure that communications sets realistic customer
expectations

9. Prescriptions for Closing the
Seven Service Quality Gaps (3)
5. Perceptions gap: Educate customers to see
reality of service quality delivered
– Keep customers informed during service delivery and
debrief after delivery
– Provide physical evidence
6. Interpretation gap: Pretest communications to
make sure message is clear and unambiguous
– Present communication materials to a sample of
customers in advance of publication
7. Service gap: Close gaps 1 to 6 to meet customer
expectations consistently

10. Measuring and Improving
Service Quality

11. Soft and Hard Measures
of Service Quality
• Soft measures—not easily observed, must be collected by
talking to customers, employees, or others
– Provide direction, guidance, and feedback to employees on
ways to achieve customer satisfaction
– Can be quantified by measuring customer perceptions and
beliefs
• For example: SERVQUAL, surveys, and customer advisory panels
• Hard measures—can be counted, timed, or measured
through audits
– Typically operational processes or outcomes
– Standards often set with reference to percentage of occasions
on which a particular measure is achieved
– Control charts are useful for displaying performance over time
against specific quality standards

12. Soft Measures of Service Quality
• Key customer-centric SQ measures include:
– Total market surveys, annual surveys, transactional surveys
– Service feedback cards
– Mystery shopping
– Analysis of unsolicited feedback—complaints and
compliments, focus group discussions, and service reviews
• Ongoing surveys of account holders to determine satisfaction in terms of broader
relationship issues
• Customer advisory panels offer feedback/advice on performance
• Employee surveys and panels to determine:
– Perceptions of the quality of service delivered to customers
on specific dimensions
– Barriers to better service
– Suggestions for improvement

13. Hard Measures of Service Quality
• Control charts to monitor a single variable
– Offer a simple method of displaying performance over
time against specific quality standards
– Are only good if data on which they are based is
accurate
– Enable easy identification of trends
• Service quality indexes
– Embrace key activities that have an impact on customers

14. Tools to Analyze and Address
Service Quality Problems
• Fishbone diagram
– Cause-and-effect diagram to identify potential causes of
problems
• Pareto Chart
– Separating the trivial from the important. Often, a
majority of problems is caused by a minority of causes
(i.e. the 80/20 rule)
• Blueprinting
– Visualization of service delivery, identifying points where
failures are most likely to occur

15. Tools to Analyze and Address
Service Quality Problems
• Total Quality Management (TQM)
• ISO 9000
– Comprises requirements, definitions, guidelines, and related
standards to provide an independent assessment and
certification of a firm’s quality management system
• Malcolm Baldrige Model Applied to Services
– To promote best practices in quality management, and
recognizing, and publicizing quality achievements among U.S.
firms
• Six Sigma
– Statistically, only 3.4 defects per million opportunities
(1/294,000)
– Has evolved from defect-reduction approach to an overall
business-improvement approach

16. 16
Cause and Effect
Diagram
(C&E, Ishikawa, Fault or Fishbone
Diagram)

17. 17
Problem/
Desired
Improvement
Main Category
Cause
Root Cause
Cause & Effect Diagram
• The Cause and effect diagram is also called:
– Fishbone Diagram-because of the way it looks
– Ishakawa Diagram for the inventor, Dr. Kaoru Ishakawa.

18. Cause-and-Effect Chart for
Flight Departure Delays
Aircraft late to
gate
Late food
service
Late fuel
Late cabin
cleaners
Poor announcement of
departures
Weight and balance sheet
late
Delayed
Departures
Delayed check-in
procedure
Acceptance of late
passengers
Facilities,
Equipment
Front-Stage
Personnel
Procedures
Materials,
Supplies
Customers
Gate agents
cannot process
fast enough
Late/unavailable
airline crew
Arrive late
Oversized bags
Weather
Air traffic
Frontstage
Personnel
Procedures
Materials,
Supplies
Backstage
Personnel
Information
Customers
Other Causes
Mechanical
Failures
Late pushback
Late baggage

19. Blueprinting
• Depicts sequence of front-stage interactions
experienced by customers plus supporting
backstage activities
• Used to identify potential fall points—where
failures are most likely to appear
• Shows how failures at one point may have a ripple
effect later
• Managers can identify points which need urgent
attention
– Important first step in preventing service quality
problems

20. Six Sigma Methodology to
Improve and Redesign Service Processes
Process Improvement Process Design/Redesign
Define  Identify the problem
 Define requirements
 Set goals
 Identify specific or broad problems
 Define goal/change vision
 Clarify scope and customer requirements
Measure  Validate problem/process
 Refine problem/goal
 Measure key steps/inputs
 Measure performance to requirements
 Gather process efficiency data
Analyze  Develop causal hypothesis
 Identify root causes
 Validate hypothesis
 Identify best practices
 Assess process design
 Refine requirements
Improve  Develop ideas to measure root
causes
 Test solutions
 Measure results
 Design new process
 Implement new process, structures, and
systems
Control  Establish measures to
maintain performance
 Correct problems as needed
 Establish measures and reviews to
maintain performance
 Correct problems as needed

21. TQM in a Service Context:
Twelve Critical Dimensions for Implementation
• Top management commitment and visionary leadership
• Human resource management
• Technical system, including service process design and process management
• Information and analysis system
• Benchmarking
• Continuous improvement
• Customer focus
• Employee satisfaction
• Union intervention and employee relations
• Social responsibility
• Service culture

22. When Does Improving Service Reliability Become
Uneconomical?
Satisfy Target Customers
through Service
Recovery
Optimal Point of
Reliability: Cost of
Failure = Service
Recovery
Satisfy Target Customers
through Service Delivery
as Planned
100%
ServiceReliability
Investment
Small Cost,
Large Improvement
Large Cost,
Small Improvement
A B C D
Assumption: Customers are equally (or even more) satisfied
with the service recovery provided than with a service that is
delivered as planned.