Services Marketing - Service Quality Dimensions

SERVICES
MARKETING
CHAPTER - 6
SERVICE QUALITY
DIMENSIONS & SERVQUAL
1

Service Quality
• According to David Gravin, the Service
Quality can be defined from different
perspectives –
(1) User based,
(2) Product based,
(3) Manufacturing based,
(4) Value based &
(5) Transcendent view.
2

User Based Approach :
• This approach suggests that quality should
be defined from the customer’s prospective.
• A service offering that meets the customer
need & wants to his complete satisfaction is
quality service.
• This approach also recognises that different
customers have different needs, because of
which it becomes difficult for the service
provider to satisfy every customer’s needs.
3

Product Based Approach :
• This approach suggests that the
service offered by a firm falls short of
the quality standard only when a
certain attribute or aspect of service is
left out or distorted.
• This view is totally objective, and
hence it fails to account for differences
in customers.
4

Operations Based Approach :
• This approach suggests that the
quality of a service depends on the
efficiency of the operations involved in
service design & delivery.
• It emphasises cost effectiveness &
productivity rather than customers’
needs & preferences.
5

Value Based Approach :
• This approach seeks to define quality
as the value offered in return for the
price paid by the customer.
• In other words it suggests that the
higher the price charged from the
customer, the more should be the
benefits offered by the service
provider.
6

Transcendent View Of
Quality :
• This view suggests that a person can
assess the quality of service
accurately only when he is exposed
to it repeatedly.
• This implies that consistency in
maintaining quality standard is
important.
7

SIGNIFICANCE OF QUALITY
Following are the two basic reasons why quality
is significant for the success of a service
company :
To win credibility & get repeat customers :
• If a company offers quality service
consistently, It enjoys repeat
business, i.e., customers visit it repeatedly.
• They may even refer it to their friends and
relatives and provide positive word-of-mouth
publicity to the quality service offered by the
company.
8

SIGNIFICANCE OF QUALITY
To charge premium price :
• When a company offers superior
quality service, compared to its
competitors, customers who value
quality will always prefer this company
to other players in the market.
• So, the company will be in a position to
charge a premium price from
customers.
9

The Outcomes Of Quality
• Service providers evaluate certain
components of a service to determine its
quality.
• On the other hand, ultimately, consumers
judge of the service on the basis given below:
• (1) on their perceptions of the technical
outcome provided &
• (2) on how the outcome was delivered.
According to Christian Gronoos, any service
has two important components – technical &
functional.
10

The Outcomes Of Quality
1.Technical : This component refers to the
actual output of the service operation. The
technical component of service is easier to
evaluate than the functional component.
2.Functional or Process : This component
involves interaction between the customer &
the service personnel.
3.Some Marketing experts consider the Image /
Reputation of a company having a direct &
strong effect in the customer’s perception of
quality.
11

SERVICE QUALITY DIMENSIONS
According to L L Berry, A Parasuraman & V
A Zeithaml service quality is determined
by customers using various criteria like :
• credibility, security,
• access, communications,
• tangibles, responsiveness,
• reliability, competence,
• courtesy, understanding, etc.
12

Christian Gronoos also suggested another list of
criteria as
• professionalism & skills,
• attitude & behaviour,
• accessibility & flexibility,
• reliability & trustworthiness,
• reputation & credibility, and recovery.
• Since some of these factors are similar or
overlapping, the authors have consolidated
these into five distinct dimensions, as given
below :
13

1.Reliability : Ability to perform the promised
service dependably & accurately.
2.Responsiveness : Willingness to help
customers & provide prompt service.
3.Assurance : Employees’ knowledge &
courtesy and their ability to inspire trust &
confidence.
4.Empathy : (understanding & sensitive)
Caring individualised attention given to
customers.
5.Tangibles : Appearance of physical facilities,14

• These dimensions represent how
consumers organise information about
service quality in their minds.
• These five dimensions were found
relevant for banking, insurance,
appliances repair & maintenance,
securities brokerage, long distance
tele-service, auto repair service, &
others.
• The dimensions are also applicable to
retail & business services.
15

• This can be logically extended to
internal services as well.
• Sometimes customers will use all of
the dimensions to determine service
quality perceptions, at other times, not.
• (Ex., in a remote encounter such as
ATM, empathy is not relevant, and in a
phone encounter such as scheduling a
repair call, tangibles are not relevant.)
16

Reliability :
Delivering on Promises :
• Reliability is defined as the ability to
perform the promised service
dependably & accurately.
• In its broadest sense, reliability means
that the company delivers on
– Its promises about delivery,
– Service provision, problems resolution
– And finally pricing.
17

Reliability :
• Customers want to do business with
companies that keep their
promises, particularly their promises
about the core service attributes.
• All firms need to be aware of customer
expectation of reliability.
• Firms that don’t provide the core service
the customers think they are buying, fail
or frustrate their customers in the most
direct way.
18

Responsiveness :
Being Willing to Help :
• Responsiveness is the willingness to help
customers & provide prompt service.
• These dimensions emphasise
attentiveness & promptness in dealing
with customer requests, questions,
complaints, & problems.
• Responsiveness is communicated to
customers by the length of time they have
to wait for assistance, answers to
questions, or attention to problems.
19

• Responsiveness also captures the
notion of flexibility & ability to
customise the service to customer
needs.
• To excel on the dimension of
Responsiveness, a company must be
certain to view the process of service
delivery the handling of requests from
the customer’s point of view, rather
than from the company’s point of view.
20

Assurance :
Inspiring Trust & Confidence :
Assurance is defined as employees’
knowledge & courtesy and the ability of
the firm & its employees to inspire trust &
confidence.
• This dimension is likely to be particularly
important for services that the customer
perceives as involving high risk and/or
about which they feel uncertain about
their ability to evaluate outcomes.
21

22
• Ex., Insurance, Banking, Mutual
Fund, Brokerage, Medical & Legal
Services.
• Trust & confidence may be incorporated
in the person who links the customer to
the company.
• Ex., Security brokers, Insurance
agents, Lawyers, Counsellors.
• In such service context the company
seeks to build trust & loyalty between key
contact people & individual customers.

23
• In other situations, trust & confidence
are embodied in the organisation itself.
• In the early stages of relationship, the
customer may use tangible evidence to
assess the assurance dimensions.
• Ex., visible evidence of
degrees, honours, & awards and
special certification may give a new
customer confidence in a professional
service provider.

Empathy : Treating Customers
as Individuals :
• Empathy denotes a deep emotional
understanding of another's feelings or
problems; while sympathy is more
general and can apply to small
annoyances or setbacks.
• Sympathy means the stimulation in a
person of feelings that are similar in kind
to those that affect another person;
empathy means a mental or affective
projection into the feelings or state of
mind of another person.
24

25
• Empathy is defined as the
caring, individualised attention the firm
provides its customers.
• The essence of empathy is conveying thro’
personalised or customised service, that
customers are unique & special.
• Customers want to feel understood by and
important to firms that provide service to
them.
• Personnel at small service firms often know
customers by name & build relationships
that reflect their personal knowledge of
customer requirements & preferences.

26
• When such a small firm competes with
larger firms, the ability to be empathetic
may give the small firm a clear
advantage.
• In business to business
services, customers want supplier firms
to understand their industries & issues.
• Many small computer consulting firms
successfully compete with large vendors
by positioning themselves as specialists
in particular industries.

Tangibles : Representing the
Service Physically :
• Tangibles are defined as the appearance of
physical facilities, equipment, personal, &
written communication materials.
• All of these provide physical representation
or image of the service that
customers, particularly new customers, will
use to evaluate quality.
• Service industries that emphasise tangibles
in their strategic include hospitality services
where the customer visits the establishment
to receive the service, such as
restaurants, hotels, retail stores, &27

28
• While tangibles are often used by
service companies to enhance their
image, provide continuity, & single
quality to customers, most companies
combine tangibles with another
dimension to create a service quality
strategy for the firm.
• In contrast, firms that don’t pay
attention to the tangible dimension of
the service strategy can confuse &
even destroy an otherwise good
strategy.

SERVQUAL - Introduction :
• A good service marketing research
programme includes several types of
research study. The composite of studies
& types of research will differ by
company because the range of use for
service quality research – from employee
performance assessment to advertising
campaign development to strategic
planning – requires a rich, multi-
dimensional flow of information.
29

Relationship & Servqual Surveys
• One category of surveys could
appropriately be named relationship
surveys because they pose questions
about all elements in the customers’
relationship with the company
(including service, product, & price).
• This comprehensive approach can
help a company diagnose its
relationship strengths & weaknesses.
30

31
• These surveys typically monitor &
track service performance annually
with an initial survey providing a base
line.
• Relationship surveys are also effective
in comparing company performance
with that of competitors, often
focusing on the best competitor’s
performance as a benchmark. The
following are the salient features :

Feature - 1
• Unlike goods quality, which can be
measured objectively by such indicators
(as durability, & no. of defects), service
quality is abstract & is best captured by
surveys that measure customers’
evaluations of service.
• One of the first measures to be
developed specifically to ensure service
quality was the SERVQUAL SURVEY as
devised by Parasuraman, Zeithaml, &
32

Feature - 2
• The SERVQUAL scale involves a survey
containing over 21 service quality
attributes grouped into the five service
quality dimensions (discussed earlier)
of reliability, responsiveness,
assurance, empathy, & tangibles.
• The survey sometimes asks customers
to provide two different rating on each
attribute –
33

34
a.Reflecting the level of service they would
expect from excellent companies in a
sector, &
b.Reflecting their perception of the service
delivered by a specific company in the
same sector.
• The difference between the
expectation & perception ratings
constitutes a qualified measure of
service quality.

Feature - 3
• Data gathered thro’ a SERVQUAL
survey can be used for a variety of
purposes as given below :
– To determine the average gap score
(between customer perceptions &
expectations), for each service attribute.
– To assess a company’s service quality
along each of the five SERVQUAL
dimensions.
– To track customers’ expectation &
perception (on individual service
attributes and/or the SERVQUAL
dimensions) over time. 35

36
– To compare a company’s SERVQUAL
score against those of competitors.
– To identify & examine customer segments
those differ significantly in their
assessments of a company’s service
performance.
– To assess internal service quality (i.e., the
quality of service rendered by one
department or division of a company to
others within the same company).

Feature - 4
• Several published studies have used
SERVQUAL & its adaptations in a variety
of context :
• Real estate brokers, physicians in private
practice, public recreation programmes,
dental schools, business school
placement centres, tyre stores, motor
carrier companies, accounting firms,
discount & department stores, gas &
electric utility companies, hospitals,
banking, pest control, dry cleaning, fast
food, higher education, etc.
37

Feature - 5
• SERVQUAL has also been
productively used in multiple
contexts, cultures, & countries for
measuring service quality in as well
as public sector firms.
• Many of the findings are confidential,
unpublished, & proprietary.
• One general application sample is
presented here.
38

Sample SERVQUAL Survey :
• The SERVQUAL scale was fist devised in
1988, and since then it has undergone
several changes. The scale currently
uses about 21 attributes distributed
across the five service dimensions. Each
statement has two ratings –
• 1) for the Expectation of the customer, &
• (2) for the Perception of the customer.
• The ratings from 1 to 7 are ranged from
“Strongly Disagree” to “Strongly Agree”.
39

40
No Perception Statements in Reliability
Dimension
1 to 7
1 When X company promises to do
something by a certain time, it does so.
2 When you have a problem, X company
shows a sincere interest in solving it.
3 X company performs the service right the
first time.
4 X company provides its service at the time
it promises to do so.
5 X company insists on error-free records.

41
No. Perception Statements in
Responsiveness Dimension
1 - 7
1 X company keeps customers
informed about when services will be
performed.
2 Employees in X company give you
prompt service.
3 Employees in X company are always
willing to help you.
4 Employees in X company are never
too busy to respond to your request.

42
No. Perception Statements in Assurance
Dimension
1 - 7
1 The behaviour of employees in X
company instils confidence in you.
2 You feel safe in your transactions
with X company.
3 Employees in X company are
consistently courteous with you.
4 Employees in X company have the
knowledge to answer your
questions.

43
No Perception Statements in Empathy
Dimension
1 - 7
1 X company gives you individual
attention.
2 X company has employees who give
you personal attention.
3 X company has your best interest at
heart.
4 Employees of X company understand
your specific needs.
5 X company has operating hours that
are convenient to all its customers.

44
No Perception Statements in Tangibles
Dimension
1 - 7
1 X company has modern looking
equipment.
2 X company’s physical facilities are
visually appealing
3 X company’s employees appear neat
& clean.
4 Materials associated with the service
(such as pamphlets or statements)
are visually appealing at X company.

The GAPS Model
• The Gaps arising thus in each
statement ratings are considered
individually for assessment & designs
for reducing them thro’ the Gaps
Model.
Note : The Gaps or GAPS Model of Service Quality
Dimensions is the subject matter of another
Presentation by the same Author. Please see that.
45

Post-Transaction Surveys or
Trailer Calls :
• The purpose of SERVQUAL surveys is
usually to gauge the overall relationship
with the customer.
• The purpose of transaction surveys is to
capture information about one or all of
the key service encounters with the
customers.
• Some call it a short-cut or abridged
SERVQUAL survey.
46

Transaction / Short-Cut Servqual
Survey
• In this method customers are asked a
short list of questions immediately
after a particular transaction or
encounter (hence the name trailer
calls) about their satisfaction with the
transaction & contact personal with
whom they interact.
• It takes less time, effort & cost & hence
very effective.
47

Services Marketing - Service Quality Dimensions

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