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9.Service and quality
Service quality is generally viewed as the output of the service delivery system, especially in the case of pure service systems.
Moreover, service quality is linked to consumer satisfaction. Service quality is a perception of the customer.
Customers, however, form opinions about service quality not just from a single reference but from a host of contributing factors.
1. Meaning of Service Quality 2. Definitions of Service Quality 3. Concept 4. Characteristics and Objectives 5. Dimensions 6. Principles
7. Steps 8. Service Quality Standards 9. Monitoring Service Quality. 10. Service Quality Measurement and Control 11. Models 12. Evaluation 13. Strategies for Improving Service Quality.
It is a combination of two words, Service and Quality where we find emphasis on the availability of quality services to the ultimate users. The term quality focuses on standard or specification that a service generating organisation promises. We can’t have a clear-cut boundary for quality. Sky is the limit for quality generation. Scientific inventions and innovations make the ways for the generation of quality. More frequency in innovations, less gap in the process of quality up-gradation.
Like the goods manufacturing organisations even the service generating organisations are found instrumental in promoting research and devising something new that makes the services, schemes distinct to the competitors and creates profitable market opportunities to capitalise on. It is against this background that in the developed countries, the process of innovation is found more frequent.
The created quality shapes the boundary of expectations since the users tasting the sweetness, of world-class services expect the same from other organisations. The expectations pave the avenues for satisfaction or dissatisfaction. If we succeed in fulfilling the expectations of users, they are found satisfied and the satisfaction makes the ways for increasing the market share.
It is right to mention that the service quality satisfaction is the outcome of the resources and activities expanded to offer service against the expectations of users from the same. It is also opined that the service quality can be broken into technical quality and functional quality.
For the purpose of improving the levels of the quality of services that we offer. The service generating organisations are required to identify the reasons entailed behind mounting dissatisfaction amongst the users and to activate appropriate measures (technical or functional) to minimise it.
The technical measures draw our attention on the inventions and innovations in the field of technologies that help to improve the quality of services. It focuses on the use of technology or prefer to have a technology-driven service. The functional measures gravitate our attention on improving the quality of services offered by the employees, which pave ways for style of functioning, work culture, formulation of a profitable package, behavioural profile of employees or so.
The frequency in the process of technological innovations vis-a-vis the growing influence of high-performer employees develop technology-driven and user-friendly service with a new quality.
The functional quality of employees can be improved by strong emphasis on behavioural areas such as attitudes, service-mindedness, accessibility, interpersonal relations, appearance, and commitment. It is right to say that poor quality of services or service failures are not designed into the system by the choice of the senior management.
The aforesaid facts make it clear that the perception of service quality keeps on changing and the governing factors are use of new generation of technologies, development of quality people and an attitudinal change in the boardrooms.
The top management and the senior executives bear the responsibility of shaping the perception of service quality by promoting the use of sophisticated technologies and increasing the number of personally- committed employees. This makes it essential that the service generating organisations prefer to practise the principle of making things happen which focuses on quality generation.
Service quality is generally viewed as the output of the service delivery system, especially in the case of pure service systems. Moreover, service quality is linked to consumer satisfaction.
Although there is no consensus in the research community about the direction of causality relating quality and satisfaction, the common assumption is that service quality leads to satisfied customers.
For example – customers leaving a res taurant or hotel are asked if they were satisfied with the service they received. If they answer “no,” one tends to assume that service was poor.
Direct service providers, such as waitresses, also note that at times the best service efforts are criticized because the customer’s perceptions of the service are clouded by being in a bad mood or having a disagreement with someone just before arriving at the restaurant.
These service providers recognize that in practice the influence of service quality on customer satisfaction is affected by other factors, one of which is the customer’s physical and psychological conditions.
Over the last fifteen years, research on service quality has grown extensively and substantively. The topic has attracted interest among managers and researchers because of the substantial effects customer perceptions of service quality have on the satisfaction and loyalty of customers, as well as on brand equity.
Service quality research has also achieved a truly global scope and significance and attracted contributions from scholars from many disciplines.
Even though a number of methodological issues have been debated, the preponderance of research has been strongly influenced by the conceptual model of service quality proposed by Parasuraman et al. and subsequently operationalized and refined by the same authors.
This articulation of the service quality construct and its associated SERVQUAL measure has spawned hundreds of studies around the world, over 70% coming from outside the United States. It has contributed to a rich empirical record that has yet to be synthesized using meta-analytic techniques.
The research derives from an extensive project that began by gathering over 500 service quality articles. Articles were coded by two researchers and then included in a meta-analysis if they contained any of the following matrices – mean levels of customer expectations, performance perceptions, or gaps between expectations and performance perceptions, correlations linking service quality to other related constructs, inter-correlations among the five SERVQUAL dimensions, or consumers’ importance ratings of the SERVQUAL dimensions.
The data was analysed by means of a nested, multi-level modelling procedure using the HLM program. Although based upon sophisticated meta-analysis, our intent is to present the fascinating and far-reaching results of this work with both a research and a managerial emphasis.