Service Quality

Quality in Services
Customer perceived quality is often defined as the relationship between the the customer expectations of the service and the customer perception of the service received.

Moments of Truth

Each customer contact is called a moment of truth. You have the ability to either satisfy or dissatisfy them when you contact them. A service recovery is satisfying a previously dissatisfied customer and making them a loyal customer.

Perceived Service Quality

Word of mouth Personal needs Past experience

Service Quality Dimensions Reliability Responsiveness Assurance Empathy Tangibles

Expected service

Perceived service

Service Quality Assessment 1. Expectations exceeded ES<PS (Quality surprise) 2. Expectations met ES~PS (Satisfactory quality) 3. Expectations not met ES>PS (Unacceptable quality)

MEASURING SERVICE QUALITY Service Quality Gap Analysis

Customer Perceptions
Managing the Evidence
Customer Satisfaction GAP 5

Customer Expectations
Understanding the Customer

Communication GAP 4

Customer / Marketing Research GAP 1

Service Delivery
Conformance GAP 3

Management Perceptions of Customer Expectations

Design GAP 2

Conformance

Service Standards

Service Design

Measuring Service Quality SERVQUAL

It is a multidimensional scale for measuring five dimensions of service quality: Reliability, responsiveness, assurance, empathy and tangibles. Reliability: Right and timely delivery, error free records, conformance to standards Responsiveness:exact communication, promptness and willingness to help

Stages in quality development

This summarises the progressive steps in Quality Development QUALITY FUNCTION DEPLOYMENT QUALITY SERVICE BY DESIGN UNCONDITIONAL SERVICE GURANTEE COST OF QUALITY QUALITY TRAINING PROGRAMMES STATISTICAL PROCESS CONTROL INSPECTION

SERVICE QUALITY BY DESIGN

It is incorporation of quality in Service package Supporting Facility: Physical resources that must be I place before a service can be offered Facilitating goods: The material purchased or consumed by the buyer Information: Operations data or information that is provided by the customer to enable efficient and customised services Explicit Service : The benefits that are readily observable by the senses that are essential features of the service Implicit Service: Psychological benefits that the customer will sense only vaguely

Service Quality by Design

Taguchi methods Named after Genichi Taguchi For a customer a products quality is in its performance when abused So he advocates the use of robust designs of products

Service Quality by Design

Poka Yoke Errors occur not because employees are incompetent but sometimes because of interruptions in routine or lapses in attention He suggests the use of low cost, in process,quality control mechanisms and routines used by employees in their work to achieve high quality without costly inspection e.g. checklists and manual devices

QUALITY FUNCTION DEPLOYMENT

Establish the aim of the project Determine customer expectations Describe the elements of service Note the strength of relationship between service elements Note the association between customer expectations and service elements Weighting the service elements Service element improvement difficulty rank Assessment of competition Strategic assessment and goal setting

House of Quality
Informatiion Equipment

Relationships

*
O O O

Strong Medium Weak

Capacity

Training

Attitude

Customer Expectations Reliability Responsiveness Assurance Empathy Tangibles 9 7 6 4 2

Comparison with Volvo Dealer

Weighted score Improvement difficulty rank

Relative
Servic e Elements Im po rta nc e 8 3 5 2

Customer Perc eptions o Village Volvo

+ Volvo Dealer
1 2 3 4 5 + o o

5 9 9 7 3 6

5 2

+
o o o

+ +
3

+
o o o o o

_
127 82 4 5

63 102 1 3

65 2

BENCHMARKING

Comparing with the performance of other companies known for being Best in Class Visit the leading firms to understand how the management has achieved such outstanding performance

Walk Through Audit

A walk Through Audit is a customer focussed survey to uncover areas of improvement The entire customer experience is traced from beginning to end. It is focussed on the detqails of the service delivery process in an effort to uncover actionable items for improvement

Achieving Service Quality

COST OF QUALITY Prevention Cost: Costs associated with operations or activities that keep failure from happening and minimizing detection costs Detection Costs: Costs incurred to ascertain the condition of a service and to determine whether it conforms to safety standards. Internal failure: Costs incurred to correct non conforming work prior to delivery to the customer External failure: Costs incurred to correct non conforming work after delivery to the customer or to correct work that did not satisfy a customers special needs

Service Process Control

Compare the output with the standard Communicate the deviations from the standard back to the input Make adjustments to keep the output within a tolerable limit In case of services it is difficult to define Service Performance Measures because services are intangible so surrogate measures of service quality have to be used. Because of inseparability controlling service quality is difficult.Monitoring only the final consumer responses , however may be too late to avoid the loss of future sales So companies must focuss on the service delivery process itself.through a process called Statistical Process Control

Service Process Control

Customer input Service concept Customer output

Resources

Service process

Take corrective action Identify reason for nonconformance

Monitor conformance to requirements

Establish measure of performance

Statistical Process control

A visual display called a control chart is used to plot values of a measure of process performance Steps in preparing a control chart: Decide on some measure of service system performance Collect representative historical data from which estimates of the population mean and variance for the system performance measure can be made Decide on sample size and using the estimates of population mean and variance, calculate +_3 standard deviation control limits Graph the control chart as a function of sample mean values versus time Plot sample means collected at random on the chart , and interpret the results as follows Process in control Process out of control Update the control chart

P- Chart for SPC

Fraction of sorting errors- y axis Random samples drawn daily-x axis

.11

UCL

.05

LCL

Unconditional Service Guarantee: Management View

Focuses on customers (British Airways) Sets clear standards (FedEx) Guarantees feedback (Manpower) Promotes an understanding of the service delivery system (Bug Killer) Builds customer loyalty by making expectations explicit

Service Recovery Framework

Severity Of Failure Service Failure Occurs Perceived Service Quality Psychological -empathy -apology Provider Aware of Failure Tangible -fair fix -value add Fair Restitution Psychological -apology -show interest

Patronage

Service Recovery Expectations

Service Recovery

Follow-up Service Recovery

Loyalty Satisfaction Retention

Customer Loyalty

Service Guarantee

Speed of Recovery

Frontline Discretion

Tangible -small token

Pre-recovery Phase

Immediate Recovery Phase

Follow-up Phase

Service Recovery Framework

Service Guarantee Features

Unconditional Easy to understand and communicate Meaningful Easy to invoke Easy to collect

Advantages

Focuses on customer Sets clear standards Guarantees Feedback Promotes an understanding od service delivery system Builds customer loyalty