Are quantitative performance measures sufficient to understand how customer perceive your services? Presented at the World Business Capability Conference in Auckland (December 2012).

1. The Incompleteness Theorem of
Service Quality Measurement
The Limitations of quantitative
business excellence assessments
Peter Prevos
Manager Land Development, Coliban Water (Bendigo, Australia)
PhD Candidate, La Trobe University (Melbourne, Australia)

2. The Measurement Axiom
“What you measure is
what you get”
Welch, J. (2001). Straight
from the gut. Warmer Books.

3. The Theorem
“Any effectively
generated system
capable of measuring
service quality cannot
be both complete and
consistent.”
The incompleteness
theorem will be illustrated
using examples from the
tap water perspective.

4. Tap Water Services
● Physical Parameters
– Pressure
● Service failure (no
pressure)
– Purity
● Biological
● Chemical
Measuring water purity is
a scientific process.

5. Tap Water Services
● Subjective customer
experience
– Surveys
– Taste testing
The customer experience is
inherently subjective.

6. Service Quality
Expected Total Perceived Quality Experienced
Quality Quality
Image
• Market Communication
• Image
• Word-of-Mouth Technical Functional
• Customer Needs Quality: What Quality: How
The total perceived quality (Based on: Christiaan Grönroos 1990).

7. Measurement ≠ Understanding
“Too often we measure
everything and
understand nothing”
Welch, J. (2001). Straight
from the gut. Warmer
Books.

8. What does this mean?
● Quantitative
– Necessary but not
sufficient condition
● Qualitative
– Inherently subjective
– Narratives of Any specific suite of quantitative
service quality targets can not
customer experience measure all aspects. Qualitative
assessments are required to
understand customers.

9. InvisibleWater.org