Service Quality Essay Example for Free

Service Quality Essay Perceived service quality has been defined as Customers’ overall impression of the relative inferiority / superiority of the organization and its services (Bitner and Hubbert, 1994, as cited by Dinuka Wijetunga et al. 2003). To gain full understanding of service quality, it is necessary to identify characteristics of services. The three major characteristics are intangibility, heterogeneity and inseparability of production and consumption (Parasuraman et al. , 1985). An extensive review of this topic (Lehtines, U. and Lehtinen, J. R. , 1982; Parasuraman et al. , 1985; Sasser, W. E. et al. , 1978) suggests three major qualitative results: 1. Service quality is more difficult to evaluate than product quality. 2. Service quality perceptions result from a gap between consumers’ expectations and perceived service performance. 3. Not only the outcome of a service but also the process of service delivery determines the evaluation. The fact that service quality perception are the result of comparisons between expected and perceived service performance implies each customer may feel differently about similar service experiences provided by a certain provider. This suggests that there is no general service measurement scheme applicable to every customer rather, service quality evaluation should be determined by the aggregate of all customers’ perceptions about a particular service provider. Therefore, managing service quality should mean managing the aggregate of all customers’ perceptions. The first attempt to describe and defined service quality was the paradigm suggested by Gronroos (1983) who distinguished between technical quality (What is done) and functional quality (how it is done). The early work of Gronroos (1983) was later extended by parasuraman, Zeithaml and Berry, (1985). They argued that to fully understand service must be acknowledged and that service quality can be defined as the consumer’s overall impression of the relative inferiority / superiority of the organization and its services (Bitner amp; Hubbert, 1994) or as the customer’s assessment of the overall excellence or superiority of the service (Zeithaml, 1988). In these terms service quality means conforming to customer expectations (Lewis amp; Booms, 1983) and implies, from a consumer perspective, the comparison of customer expectations with customer perceptions of actual service performance (Parasuraman et al. 1985) Importance of Service quality Despite the importance of providing a high level of quality to be successful in today’s very competitive market place, the concept of quality is an elusive construct mainly because of the presence of many intangible attributes. This difficulty gets worse when it comes to service quality. The services are concerned; marketing ca nnot operate in isolation from other functional areas. Tasks that might be considered the sole preserve of operations in a manufacturing environment need to involve marketers because customers are often xposed to even actively involved in service processes. Making service processes more efficient does not necessarily result in a better – quality experience for customers; nor does it always lead to improved benefits for them likewise, getting service employees to work faster may some times be welcomed by customers but at other times may make customers feel rushed and unwanted. Thus, marketing, operations and human resource managers need to communicate with one another to ensure that they can deliver quality experience more efficiently. An individual customer’s perception usually determines his/her future attitude and actions toward a service provider. Dissatisfied customers will eventually leave the company and may never come back. The aggregate of all the customers’ decisions regarding their service provider will determine the market share of the service provider. Another measure of performance of a service provider is each service provider’s distribution of customers in terms of length with the provider. Many recent articles underline the importance of loyal and long – term customers since they usually bring in more sales, often at increased profit margins. If loyal customers defect, the profit – making potential goes with them. Similarly, implementing marketing strategies to improve customer satisfaction with services can prove costly and disruptive for an organization if the implications for operations and human resources have not been carefully thought. Hence, quality strategies need to be considered carefully. Marketing’s interest in service quality is obvious when one thinks about it: poor quality places a firm at a competitive disadvantage. If customers perceive quality as unsatisfactory, they may be quick to take their business elsewhere. Recent years have witnessed a veritable explosion of discontent with service quality at a time when the quality of many manufactured goods seems to have improved significantly. From a marketing standpoint, a key issue is whether customers notice competing suppliers’ difference in quality. Consultant Brad Gale Puts says that â€Å"Value is simply quality, however the customer defines it, offered at the right price† (Bradley T. Gale, 1994)