Service Quality – Prime path to Prosperity

Service Quality – Prime Path to Prosperity Ms. G.V. Mageshwarii Ph.D. Research Scholar and

Dr. S. Vasanthi Associate Professor, PG and Research Department of Commerce, Holy Cross College (Autonomous), Tiruchirappalli – 620 002. Abstract

Service Quality is a feat in customer service. It reflects at each service encounter. Successful Companies create more surprise and delight the customers. Delighting customers is a matter of exceeding their expectations. Thus concept of quality is very important to marketers because quality derives the development of all marketing strategies.

Statement of the Problem

Christian GrÖnoos define quality of service as perceived by the customer has two dimensionTechnical and the Function dimensions. Technical dimension describes what customers receive in their interactions with a firm and Functional dimension is influenced by how the customer receives the service and experience the simultaneous production and consumption process. This paper endeavors about the concept of service quality, dimensions of service quality, service quality model, the reasons by which these gaps occur and the various ways to bridge these gap. Moreover this paper will be helpful for the organization to satisfy the customer perceptions and expectations through quality of service. Key Words : Service Quality, Dimensions of Service Quality and Gap Model.

Introduction In any organization “Consumers” becomes the pivot of all business decisions because selling focuses on the need orientation of the buyer backed by integrated marketing, with an idea of satisfying the needs and wants of the consumers by the means of products or services which delivers the desired satisfaction more efficiently and effectively than competitor and hence considered as the key to achieve organizational goal. In India, quality has become an issue of concern to most organizations in the post liberalization period due to intense competition. The persons who first debated the buzz word “Quality” were Peters and Waterman who in their work In Search of Excellence talk about it. The word “Quality” means different things to people according to the context. A user- based definition starts with the premise that quality lies in the eyes of the be-holder.. In the words of Stanton, “Services are those identifiable, essentially intangible activities, which provide want satisfaction when marketed to consumers and/or industrial uses and which are not necessarily tied to the sale of a product or another service”. Thus, the concept of quality is very essential to marketers because quality originate the development of marketing approaches of services. Academia and Society

Importance of the study

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Service gap is the difference between the quality of service perceived by the customer and expected over a period of time. As the exposure of the customers keeps on increasing, their expectation from their service provider also increases. The work of Parasuraman, Zeithaml and Berry suggest that one of the prime causes of poor performance by service firms is not knowing about what their customers expects. This research article studies about the various dimensions of service quality and Gap model proposed by Parasuraman, Zeithaml and Berry.

Objective of the study i) To explore the Dimensions of Service Quality and Gap model. ii) To focus on the reasons why the gaps occur and provide a solution to bridge the gaps.

Research Methodology Descriptive research design is used in this study. My study enlightens the Service Quality Dimensions and Gap Model. The data were collected from secondary sources such as books, journals and websites.

Service Quality It is combination of two words, Service and Quality where the emphasis is based on the availability of quality services to the ultimate users. In the words of Kotler and Armstrong “ A service is an activity or benefit that one party can offer to another that is essentially intangible and does not result in the ownership of anything. Its production may or may not be tied to a physical product”. The term quality focuses on standard or specification that a service generating organization promises. As there is no clear cut boundary for quality, scientific invention and innovations make the ways for the generation of quality. The created quality shapes the boundary of expectation since the users tasting the sweetness, of world-class service expect the same from other organizations. Thus service quality are focused from user perspective as consistently meeting or exceeding customer expectation or in other words it is a comparison of expectation with performance. These ISSN : 2393-9419

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expectations pave the avenues for satisfaction and dissatisfaction in fulfilling the expectation of the users, if found satisfied and the satisfaction makes the ways for increasing the market share.

Dimension of Service Quality Valarie A. Zeithaml, Leonard Berry and Parasuraman (PZB, 1985) conducted an exploratory investigation to formally demarcate service quality. Their investigation was composed of interviews with executives from four types of service businesses. The results of this investigation identified ten dimensions used by the consumers in evaluating service quality and they are as follows :

Dimensions Tangibles

Reliability

Responsiveness Competence

Courtesy

Credibility Security Access Communication

Understanding the Customer

Definition Appearance of physical facilities, equipment, personnel and communication materials. Ability to perform the service dependability, consistency, steadfastness, trustworthy and accurately Willingness to help customers and provide prompt service Possession of the required skills and knowledge to perform the service Politeness, respect, consideration and friendliness of contact personnel trustworthiness, believability, honesty of the service provider Freedom from danger, risk, or doubt Approachability and ease of contact Keeping customers informed in language they can understand and listening to them Making the effort to know customers and their needs

In their subsequent research they found a high degree of correlation between most of these variables and consolidated them into five broad dimensions. This new list retained Tangibles, Reliability and Responsiveness while Competence, Courtesy, Credibility and Security were combined into a new dimension called Assurance. Access, Communication, and understanding the customer on the other hand, were placed under a common dimension called Empathy. Thus the dimensions are now known as follows: 1. Tangible : Representing The Service Physically They are those factors that the customers can see, hear and touch. It includes the appearance of Academia and Society

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physical facilities, equipment and appearance of contact personnel. All of these provide physical representations or images of the service that customers will use to evaluate quality. Tangibles are used when assessing the physical qualities before the service is experienced. 2. Responsiveness: Being Willing to Help It is the willingness to help customers and provide prompt service. Responsiveness is an important dimension for those customers who require some service over and above what is usually provided. This dimension is communicated to customers by the length of time they have to wait for assistance, answer to question, or attention to problems. Responsiveness also captures the notion of flexibility and ability to customize the service to customer needs. 3. Empathy: Treating Customers as Individuals This includes providing, caring individualized attention to customers. It is described as “the human touch”. Empathy includes features like approachability, sense of security. The essence of empathy is conveying through personalized or customized service believing that customers are unique and special. Assurance: Inspiring Trust and Confidence Assurance represents the employees’ knowledge and courtesy and the ability of the firm and its employee to inspire trust and confidence. This dimension is important for service when the customer perceives an involving high risk and/or about which they feel uncertain about their ability to evaluate outcomes. A favorable assessment of assurance will indicate that the customer is satisfied as the staff understood his needs and met them. 4. Reliability: Delivering on Promises Reliability is the ability to perform the promised service dependably and accurately. To the customer it will ensure whether the promise made by the service firm has been met. Reliable service performance is a customer expectation of the service. In fact, most customers regard reliability as the most important of the five dimensions of the service performance. 

GAP Model in Service Quality Valarie Zeithaml, A. Parasuraman, and Leonard Berry identified four potential gaps within the service organization that may lead to fifth and most serious gap – the difference between what customers expected and what they perceived was delivered.

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GAP 1 – The Knowledge Gap is the difference between what senior management believes customers expect and customers’ actual needs and expectations.

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The Standard Gap happens due to management wholehearted commitment, lack of goal setting, inadequate service leadership and vague undefined service design.

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The Delivery Gap arise due to ineffective recruitment, lack of proper motivation and incentives, role ambiguity and role conflict, dispersion of control, learned helplessness and inadequate support.

4.

The Communication Gap occurs due to high level promise made by the firm to customer, horizontal communication and inability of managing the expectations of customers and not maintaining the specified norms for performing.

Proposed Solution for Bridging the Service Quality Gap 

GAP 2 – The Standard Gap is the difference between management’s understanding of customers’ expectations and the quality standards established for service delivery. It is also called as policy gap because the management made a policy decision not to deliver what they think customer expect. Reasons for setting standards below customer expectations typically include cost and feasibility considerations. GAP 3 – The Delivery Gap is the difference between specified service delivery standards and the delivery teams’ and service operations’ actual performance on these standards.

 Sharpen marketing research procedures  Implement an effective customer feedback system  Increase interaction between customer and management  Facilities and encourage communication between front-line employee and management. 

GAP 2 : The Standard Gap – Establish the Right Service Processes and Specify Standards  Use a rigorous, systematic, and customercentric process for designing customer service processes

GAP 4 – The Communication Gap is the difference between what the company communicates and what is actually delivers to its customers. This gap is caused by two- sub gap namely internal communication gap and overpromise gap. GAP 5 – The Service Quality is the difference between what customer expects to receive and their perception of the service actually is delivered. This service gap is a function of (GAP 1+ GAP 2 + GAP 3 + GAP 4). As each of these gap increases or decreases, the service gap responds in a similar manner.

GAP 1: The Knowledge Gap - Educate Management about What Customer Expect

 Develop tiered service products that meet customer expectation  Set, communicate and reinforce measurable customer-oriented service standard for all work units 

GAP 3 : The Delivery Gap – Ensure the Performance meet Standards  Ensure that the customer service team are motivated and are able to meet service standards

Reasons for Service Quality Gap

 Install the right technology, equipment, support process and capacity

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 Manage customer for service quality

The Knowledge Gap occurs due to lack of firm’s research orientation, upward communication and the level of market segmentation.

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Gap 4 : The Communication Gap – Close the Internal Communication Gap by Ensuring that Communications Promises are Realistic and correctly understood by Customers

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Educate managers responsible for sales and marketing communications about operational capabilities

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Ensure that the communication content set realistic customer expectation

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Be specific with promise and manages’ customer understanding of communication content

7. Service Management and Marketing – Christian GrÖnroos 8. Service Marketing – N.C. Jain and Saakshi Websites 9. www.google.com 10. www.wikipedia.com

Gap 5 : The Service Quality Gap – Close Gaps 1 to 4 to consistently meet customer expectations. 

It is the accumulated outcome of all preceding gaps. It will be closed when gap 1 to4 are addressed.

Conclusion A majority of us feel that service quality is more a function of attitude rather than technology. No doubt that it is now a myth. Quality is all fitness for use and customer occupies the central position. The emphasis on this human element is much more significant, however, and requires an integrated thought process to deliver maximum customer value. Thus Service quality constitutes to be the essential element for existence or prosperity of an organization.

References Journals 1. Berry, L., Zeithaml, V. and Parasuraman, A., 1988, “The service-quality puzzle”, business Horizons, Vol.31 No.5, pp.35-43. 2. Grönroos, C. 1984. A Service Quality Model and Its Marketing Implications. European Journal of Marketing. 18(4): 36–44. 3. Oliver, R. L. 1980. A Cognitive Model of the Antecedents and Consequences of Satisfaction Decisions. Journal of Marketing Research. 17(4): 460–490. 4. Parasuraman, A., Zeithaml, V. and Berry, L., 1985, “A conceptual model of service quality and its implications for future research”, Journal of Marketing, Vol. 49 No.4, pp. 41-50. 5. Parasuraman, A., Zeithaml, V. and Berry, L., 1988, “SERVQUAL – a multiple-item scale for measuring consumer perceptions of service quality”, Journal of Retailing, Vol. 64 No. 1, pp. 12-40. Books 6. Service Marketing – Lovelock, Witz, Chatterjee

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