This document discusses models of service quality including five dimensions of service quality: reliability, responsiveness, assurance, empathy, and tangibles. It describes seven service quality gaps that can occur between customer expectations and the services delivered. It provides prescriptions for closing these gaps such as learning customer expectations and ensuring service performance matches quality standards. The document also discusses hard and soft measures of service quality, return on quality, productivity in a service context, and measuring service productivity focusing on outcomes rather than just outputs.

1. SERVICE QUALITY
MODELS

2. Dimensions of Service Quality
• Reliability: Perform promised service dependably and
accurately
Example: receive mail at same time each day.
• Responsiveness: Willingness to help customers promptly
Example: avoid keeping customers waiting for no apparent
reason
• Assurance: Ability to convey trust and confidence
Example: being polite and showing respect for customer
• Empathy: Ability to be approachable
Example: being a good listener
• Tangibles: Physical facilities and facilitating goods
Example: cleanliness

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

4. Prescriptions for Closing Service Quality
Gaps
• Knowledge: Learn what customers expect--conduct
research, dialogue, feedback
• Standards: Specify SQ standards that reflect
expectations
• Delivery: Ensure service performance matches specs--
consider roles of employees, equipment, customers
• Internal communications: Ensure performance levels
match marketing promises
• Perceptions: Educate customers to see reality of service
delivery
• Interpretation: Pretest communications to make sure
message is clear and unambiguous

5. Hard and Soft Measures of Service
Quality
• Hard measures- refer to standards and measures that
can be counted, timed or measured through audits
• typically operational processes or outcomes
• e.g. how many trains arrived late?
• Soft measures- refer to standards and measures that
cannot easily be observed and must be collected by
talking to customers, employees or others
• e.g. Surveys, and customer advisory panels
• Control charts- are useful for displaying performance
over time against specific quality standards

6. Return on Quality (ROQ)
• ROQ approach is based on four assumptions:
• Quality is an investment
• Quality efforts must be financially accountable
• It’s possible to spend too much on quality
• Not all quality expenditures are equally valid
• Implication: Quality improvement efforts may benefit
from being related to productivity improvement programs

7. Productivity in a Service Context
• Productivity measures amount of output produced
relative to the amount of inputs
• Improvement in productivity means an
improvement in the ratio of outputs to inputs
• Intangible nature of many service elements
makes it hard to measure the productivity of
service firms, especially for information based
services

8. Efficiency, Effectiveness, and Productivity
• Efficiency: comparison to a standard--usually time-based
(e.g., how long employee takes to perform specific task)
• Problem: focus on inputs rather than outcomes
• May ignore variations in quality or value of service
• Effectiveness: degree to which firm is meeting its goals
• Cannot divorce productivity from quality/customer satisfaction
• Productivity: financial valuation of outputs to inputs
• Consistent delivery of outcomes desired by customers should
command higher prices

9. Measuring Service Productivity
• Traditional measures of service output tend to ignore
variations in quality or value of service
• That is, they focus on outputs rather than outcomes, and stress
efficiency but not effectiveness.
• Firms that are more effective in consistently delivering
outcomes desired by customers can command higher
prices. Furthermore, loyal customers are more profitable
• Measures with customers as denominator include:
• profitability by customer
• capital employed per customer
• shareholder equity per customer

10. Thank You
Any Questions???