SERVQUAL: A Model Of Service Quality Management

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

For different types of companies, quality might refer to quality of products or quality of service. Compares with quality of products, service quality is much more difficult to measure because service is intangible and acts and processes only existing in time. In addition, service has unique characteristic which cannot be found in products, such as customer influence, inseparability of production and consumption, heterogeneity, perishability and labor intensity (Nie & Kellogg, 1999). Even though, there are still many practitioners and academics are keen on measuring service quality because it has already emerged as a key strategic issue. Companies want to better understand service quality, and to establish methods for improving quality to achieve competitive advantage and build customer loyalty (Abdullah, 2006). Based on the importance of service quality, an increasing number of literatures and companies pay attention to measuring

The Gaps Model of Service Quality was originally developed for application in the financial service sector. The model was

Wang (2010) defined service quality as global judgement or an attitude towards the superiority of a service. Bitner and Hubbert (1994) also define service quality as “the customer’s overall impression of the relative inferiority and superiority of the organization and its services”. Moreover, Zeithaml and Bitner (2003) define “service quality is a focused evaluation that reflects the customer’s perception of specific dimensions of

Customer service models and customer service standards both have different features. The customer service models can either increase customer satisfaction or decrease customer complaints. The customer satisfaction is increased by being responsive and helpful to your customers and brining out a bigger range of products that are value for money. The customer complaints are decreased by making sure that you are giving out the correct information and resolving any queries or problems that customers may have. An atmosphere of service may also be created by both internal and external customers. Services can include training for staff members and ensuring that the policies and procedures are being followed. Another feature of customer service models is ensuring that you provide excellent service to your customers. To do this, you need to meet your customer’s needs and expectations. You will also need to ensure that you have knowledge on the assistance and advice that you are able to provide for you customers. One feature of customer service standards is ensuring that you are continuously updating the policies and procedures to ensure that you meet the customer’s needs. This means that you will need to ensure that you conform to equality and diversity when dealing with customers. Also, you will need to ensure that you are dealing

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

Source : Adapted from A. Parasuraman, Valerie Zeithaml, and Leonard Berry, “A Conceptual Model of Service Quality and Its Implications for Future Research,” Journal of Marketing, 49 (Fall 1985)

Customer satisfaction and service quality are the two important components that direct anyone’s attention in every concept related to marketing, services, etc. (Spreng and Mackoy, 2006). In today’s competitive era, the success lies in

SERVQUAL model can also be used in “helping an organization shape up their efforts in bridging the gap between perceived and expected service” (Wikipedia, 2011). Another factor that has to be carefully analyzed and determined by the company is the capacity management of Supershuttle. It is an important part of operations

Service Quality as described by (William G. Zikmund, 1993) “is the degree to which the performance of service provider’s matches customer expectations. It can also be defined as those essential characteristics of a service that measures its excellence”.

Service quality is a measurable set of standard established upon by a provider in delivering services to a client/customer. It can also be viewed upon as a degree of both tangible and intangible expectation coming from a customer’s perspective on how these services are realized by the supplier or by the product coming from the provider.

When faced with the task to research and report service quality within Marley’s Motors, no technique does a better job than the SERVQUAL model. The service quality gaps model compares a company’s service performance to the expectations of their customers. These expectations are broken down into five separate dimensions. These dimensions include reliability, assurance, tangibles, empathy, and responsiveness. The analysis that was performed for this report was based on the empathy dimension of the SERVQUAL model. Empathy is known as “the ability to understand and share the feelings of another”(Oxford Dictionaries). In the case of Marley’s, we used three attributes to measure how successfully Marley’s handled the empathy dimension. These attributes included friendliness of staff, the amount of attention received by customers, and how well the customers’ needs we met. These three attributes combine to comprise the overall satisfaction with empathy. This dimension then influences overall satisfaction with Marley’s service department.

SERVQUAL gives a good view on managing which and how the services are being offered, user satisfaction with them and which service needs improvement. One point in favour of service quality measures is that according to Gartner Group (2012), application support is one of the spending trends. However, it does rely on questionnaires and scales on a very limited part of what constitute an IT department, leaving aside mainly the technical and financial aspects. Also, Van Dyke et al. (1997), citing Teas (1993), expresses three possible interpretations of “expectation”, what could cause problem with the results. Carman (1990), by Van Dyke et al. (1997), questions the ability of the model to be valid in multiple industries with considerable

Service quality represents a fundamental aspect of delivery, which strongly influences consumer satisfaction and, as a result, loyalty. In today’s global market a customer’s service expectation has to be met and exceeded eventually in order to retain customers as well as achieve success. Perceived quality of a product or a service is becoming one of the major competitive factors in the business world and has led to the innovation of the ‘Quality Era’ (Peeler, 1996). In simple words, the comparison of customer expectations with service performance is service quality. On the other hand, customer satisfaction is defined as a pleasurable fulfilment response toward a good, service, benefit, or reward (Oliver, 1997). Both of these

In managing the business which provides pure services to the customer, company need to ensure that the service delivered is meeting with expectation and satisfied the customer. The quality of services is considered to be a critical success factor for the service companies. Service is close conceptual as well as empirical link to customer satisfaction turned it into the core marketing instrument, making it the most researched area in services marketing (Fisk et al., 1995; Bolton et al., 2000). In addition, the accumulated research has linked positively the service with profitability (Fornell, 1992).