Managing Service Delivery Individual Final Assessment Essay

13. Which of the following characteristics makes it EASIER to measure the quality of a service, relative to that of a product or facilitating good?

Service quality is referred to a valuation of how good a delivered service meets the customer’s expectation. Upper management

Zineldin (2005) studied in Sweden about the product/service quality and customer relationship factor. It is has been observed that by it adds value when delivering more tangible and intangible elements of the main products and it creates stronger customer relationships In terms of competition the result of product/service quality and differentiation defines its position in ranking.

Service quality is defined as a comparison of customer expectations with service performance. The organizations with high service quality meet the customer needs and also remain most economical in terms of competition as improved service quality also makes the firm more competitive. High service quality is achieved by knowing operational process through identifying problems in service and defining measures for service performances and outcomes as well as level of customer satisfaction (Suneeta & Koranne, 2014).

Quality sets the standard in any business and if there is no quality then what’s the point to travel. Many government and private organizations have taken the initiative, towards serving their customers, with the best quality in service possible to set standards.

Quality means the total features and characteristics of a product or service that has effects upon its ability to satisfy stated or implied needs (Davidson et al. 2006). All the challenges that managers need to face to are mentioned and defined above, the analysis of the relevance of these challenges and economic results will be addressed in the next paragraph.

Service quality - refers to difference between the level of service that is expected from consumers and the perception of the service that is actually received. (Caruana,

C. Quality: The degree to which a product or service meets customer requirements and expectations.

The second dimension is tangibles which are things like physical facilities, equipment, personnel, communication materials, etc. The third dimension is responsiveness, as the company needs to make sure they are giving the customer the most adequate service, as well as promptly giving that service. The fourth dimension is assurance, which is when a company conveys trust and confidence so the consumer does not have to worry about their service being completed. The last dimension is empathy; because consumers do not want an uncaring person handling a mistake when they are stressed enough, but much rather have a caring employee deal with the matter. All of the quality dimensions are really focused around keeping your product or service where it has been without raising costs, as well as keeping a healthy customer service sector on board to work through troubling economic times where consumers do not want to worry about services that have been loyal to them in the past. (Hartlet et al., 2008, p. 34,36,121) (Hollis, 2008, p. 3-4)"

The dimensions of service quality are listed in the text as reliability, responsiveness, assurance, empathy, and tangible.

The law of demands is often referred as Consumer wants to buy more of a product at a low price and less of a product at a high price. This inversion of demand and price shows that the higher price of products the less willing to buy. However, there are amount of people who purchase a higher price product because they believe a product is better in quality.

Hung, Y. H., Huang, M. L., & Chen, K. S. (2003). Service quality evaluation by service quality performance matrix. Total Quality Management and Business Excellence.

The key to ensuring good quality service is meeting or exceeding what the customers expect from services. Judgements of high and low quality depend on how customers the actual service performance in the context of what they expected. Service quality, as perceived by the customers, can be defined as the extent of discrepancy but customers’ expectations or desires and their

18.   The dimensions of product and service quality are too abstract to be applied to be applied operationally TRUE

Sureshchandra, Rajendran and Anantharaman (2002) identified five critical aspects of service quality from the customers point of view namely core service/service product, human element of service delivery, systematisation of service delivery, tangibles of service and lastly social responsibility in order to conceptualise service quality. Table 1 will further provide an explanation to the five critical aspects of service quality as outlined by Sureshchandra et al (2002).