Delivering Quality Service: Balancing Customer Perceptions and ExpectationsExcellence in customer service is the hallmark of success in service industries and among manufacturers of products that require reliable service. But what exactly is excellent service? It is the ability to deliver what you promise, say the authors, but first you must determine what youcanpromise. Building on seven years of research on service quality, they construct a model that, by balancing a customer'sperceptionsof the value of a particular service with the customer'sneedfor that service, provides brilliant theoretical insight into customer expectations and service delivery.For example, Florida Power & Light has developed a sophisticated, computer-based lightening tracking system to anticipate where weather-related service interruptions might occur and strategically position crews at these locations to quicken recovery response time. Offering a service that customers expect to be available at all times and that they will miss only when the lights go out, FPL focuses its energies on matching customer perceptions with potential need. Deluxe Corporation, America's highly successful check printer, regularly exceeds its customers' expectations by shipping nearly 95% of all orders by the day after the orders were received. Deluxe even put U.S. Postal Service stations inside its plants to speed up delivery time.Customer expectations change over time. To anticipate these changes, Metropolitan Life Insurance Company regularly monitors the expectations and perceptions of their customers, using focus group interviews and the authors' 22-item generic SERVQUAL questionnaire, which is customized by adding questions covering specific aspects of service they wish to track.The authors' groundbreaking model, which tracks the five attributes of quality service -- reliability, empathy, assurance, responsiveness, and tangibles -- goes right to the heart of the tendency to overpromise. By comparing customer perceptions with expectations, the model provides marketing managers with a two-part measure of perceived quality that, for the first time, enables them to segment a market into groups with different service expectations. |
Contents
The Customers View of Service Quality | 15 |
Potential Causes of ServiceQuality Shortfalls | 35 |
Not Knowing What Customers | 51 |
The Wrong ServiceQuality | 71 |
The Service Performance Gap | 89 |
When Promises Do Not Match | 115 |
Getting Started on the ServiceQuality | 135 |
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advertising Airlines American Airlines American Express Antecedents of Gap automatic teller machines bank British Airways chapter CLOSING GAP commitment to service company's contact personnel credit card customer-contact personnel customers expect deliver developed discussed Dunkin employee-job fit Employees in excellent evaluate example excellent companies excellent service executives Exhibit expectations and perceptions external communications factors Federal Express five dimensions focus groups focus-group interviews four gaps goals important improve service interact L. L. Bean levels marketing research measure middle managers operations organization perceived control perceptions of customers perceptions of service performance propensity to overpromise quality of service quality service reliability Responsiveness retail role conflict serve customers service companies service delivery service excellence service firms service leadership service providers service quality service-improvement SERVQUAL scores specific statements strategy Strongly Agree Tangibles teamwork tions tomers top management upward communication Wal-Mart