Developments in Information & Knowledge Management for Business Applications by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783030621513
Publisher: Springer International Publishing

2.3 Service Quality

“In most services, quality occurs during service delivery, usually in an interaction between the customer and contact personnel of the service firm.” [18, 19].

Service quality is one of the main points that differentiate firm from competitors and it is very important to understand what service quality is for customers and what they hold as valuable [20]. There are many definitions and dimensions of service quality. Seven service attributes are used to define service quality—security, consistency, attitude, completeness, condition, availability and training of service providers [21, 22].

Lehtinen and Lehtinen [20] defines service quality dimensions as physical quality, interactive quality, and corporate quality. Corporate quality can be seen as the image that service provider portrays, communication between service provider and the consumer is interactive quality and tangible appearance of the service is considered as physical quality.

One of the advanced models to define service quality is SERVQUAL, which defines tangibles, reliability, responsiveness, assurance and empathy as five most important dimensions [18]. Leading companies are focused on improving service quality and they use it to differentiate themselves, to increase productivity, to earn customers’ loyalty, or to fan positive word-of-mouth advertising. Competitors can seek to increase their performance with help of quality in two ways described below [18].

In the short run, they can increase profit by offering premium prices. Frank Perdue, the well-known chicken grower, said: “Customers will go out their way to buy a superior product and you can charge them a toll for the trip.” [18] (p. 9). The truth of these words we can see in the case of PIMS businesses, which ranked the top third on relative quality, and sold their product or services, on average, at price 5–6% higher relative to their competitors also stated by Zeithaml et al.

Quality and excellence pay off because it creates customers that are loyal and will use services again. Stew Leonard, food store retailer said: “We should never let a customer leave the store unhappy because we look at each customer as potential $50,000 asset. An average customer spends $100 a week on food shopping. That is more than $5000 a year, and more than $50,000 over ten years. Customer service is big business if you look at the long run picture.” [18] (p. 10). Service quality is much harder to evaluate than goods quality. Customer does not only value the outcome of the service but it puts a great deal of importance on the way service is delivered, the process of service delivery, are the workers friendly, responsive, helpful etc. and therefore service quality can be defined as “the extent of discrepancy between customers’ expectations or desires and their perceptions.” [18].

Customers’ expectations are being shaped under the influence of several factors defined by Zeithaml et al. [18]. Word-of-mouth advertising is one of them because customers shape their expectations under the influence of what they have heard about particular service provider from their friends, family, neighbors etc. Past experiences are also important, as well as the personal needs of the customer, his individual characteristics, and circumstances that he is experiencing at the moment of need.

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