SERVICE QUALITY

SERVCE QUALITY Muneeb Ahmed Roll#19(R) M.Tahir Roll#07(R) BSc(Hons.)Food Science and Technology 7 th sem Institute of Food Science and Nutrition University of Sargodha

WHAT IS SERVICE QUALITY Quality is a key requirement in every field. In terms of Industrial growth quality plays an important role & so should be understood and defined properly. Different management Scholars in different ways defines quality. But the basic concept remains same i.e. “Meeting to the Need of Customer”.

DEFINATIONS OF SERVICES

Kotler, Armstrong, Saunders and Wong “ A service is any activity or benefit that one party can offer to another which is essentially intangible and does not result in the ownership of anything.”

C. Bhattachargee “Services are the production of essentially intangible benefits and experience, either alone or as part of a tangible product through some form of exchange, with the intention of satisfying the needs, wants and desires of the consumers.”

SERVICE Service is a patch up activity to fulfill some one’s need in the market. Service is some thing, which can be experienced but cannot be touched or seen. Services offered by service providers cannot be seen & touched, as they are intangible activities.

DEFINATIONS OF QUALITY

ISO 9000 “Quality is a degree to which a set of inherent characteristics fulfills the requirements

Dr. Edward Deming “A predictable degree of uniformity & dependability to low cost and suited to the market”.

CONCLUSION OF DEFINATIONS An assessment of how well a delivered service conforms to the client's expectations. Service business operators often assess the service quality provided to their customers in order to improve their service, to quickly identify problems, and to better assess client satisfaction.

SERVICE QUALITY COMPONENTS It has at least four components: 1.Excellence. 2.Value. 3.Conformance to specifications 4.Meeting and/or exceeding expectations

Excellence. Although the mark of an uncompromising student and high achievement, the attributes of excellence may change dramatically and rapidly

Value It incorporates multiple attributes, but quality and value are different constructs-one the perception of meeting or exceeding ex- pectations and the other stressing benefit to the recipient

Conformance to specifications Facilitates precise measurement, but users of a service may not know or care about internal specifications.

Meeting and/or exceeding expectations. This definition is all-encompassing and applies across service industries, but expectations change and may be shaped by experiences with other service providers

CUSTOMER EXPECTATION AND PERCEPTION TOWARDS SERVICE As per the gap model given by Persuraman & Zeithaml there exists a gap between the customer perception & customer expectation. This gap is called as the customer gap. Customer Expectation represents the actual expected service & Customer Perception revels the actual received service..

EXPLAINATION Customer expectations are the standards against which the perceived services are checked in order to assess the quality of a service. This basically gives what is expected & what is actually received. If any difference exists between the expected service and actually received service then that difference is called as a gap, which needs to be reduced.

CONT. Expected Service (Customer Expectations) Perceived Service (Actually Receive Service) Gap between expected service & received service (customer gap)

SERVICE QUALITY CONCEPT & QUALITY PARAMETERS Service is an intangible thing, which needs to be experienced before assessing it. Any thing can be measured by measuring their respective service attributes & factors. There are certain Service Quality parameters as defined by the professional bodies in order to measure the service quality of corresponding service sector.

CONT. Customer wants to avail different services offered to them by service providers. Delivered service will become as the Quality Service if it meets the customer expectations. But customer expectation depends upon the customer perception, which may differ from person to person.

CONT. As per Parasuraman, Zeithaml & Berry the service quality is defined as : Service Quality = Perception – Expectation

SERVICE QUALITY PRECEPTION AND EXPECTATION Service quality is nothing but the difference between the service expectation & service actually received by the customer. Customer has certain expectation about the service. If the customer experience the same service as they expect then this difference will be zero and we can say that the service quality is very good. Higher the difference of above equation lower will be the service quality

MEASURING THE SERVICE QUALITY Measuring could be done Qualitatively or Quantitatively. Any thing can be measured by evaluating the related factors & respective attributes. Considering various related attributes we can monitor the Service quality. Attributes needs to be measured to get the quality.

cont. Quality measurement is concerned with the observed value for some service attributes & then by comparing these values against standards, it is possible to get the quality status of respective product or process.

SERVICE QAULITY & CUSTOMER SATISFACTION Service Quality and customer satisfaction are two closely related terms. Service quality can be assessed in two ways : 1) Is it meeting to standard? 2) Is it satisfying the customer?

Defined by Oliver “Satisfaction is the consumer's fulfillment response. It is a judgment that a product or service feature, or the product or service itself, provides a pleasurable level of consumption- related fulfillment.”

SATISFACTION TOWARDS QUALITY SERVICES Customer Satisfaction ranges from 0% (all customers are completely dissatisfied) to 100% (all customers are completely satisfied). If all customers are partially satisfied (but not completely satisfied), then this satisfaction may have a value of 75%.

MATRIC OF SATISFACTION TOWARD QS In addition to forming percentages for various satisfaction or dissatisfaction categories, the weighted index is used to get the Overall Satisfaction Index. Completely satisfied = 100% Satisfied = 75% Neutral = 50% Dissatisfied = 25% Completely dissatisfied = 0%

SERVICE'S UNIQUE CHARACTERISTICS Search Properties - attributes that a consumer can determine before Buying a service (as price, and physical facilities). Credence properties attributes that can only be discerned after purchase or during use (as courtesy of employees).

Expanded Marketing-Mix for Services From this service's unique characteristics, Booms and Bitner (1981) proposed and expanded the marketing mix for services consisting of the four traditional elements (product, price, place, promotion) and three new ones (Cowell 1989)

New elements There are three new elements of marketing mix for services: 1.Participants 2.Physical evidence 3.Process

Participants All human actors who play a part in service delivery and thus influence the buyer's perceptions: namely, the firm's personnel and other customers in the service environment.

Physical Evidence The environment in which the service is assembled and where the firm and the customer interact, as well as, any tangible commodities that facilitate performance or communication of the service.

Process Service assembly actual procedures, mechanisms, and flow of activities by which the service is delivered.

CONCLUSIONS OF SERVICE QUALITY CONCEPTUALIZATION There are almost as many definitions of service quality as writers on the subject, which suggests a prevailing confusion about the concept of service quality. However, there are not many field investigations compared to the importance of the subject and the frequent use of the term quality in everyday language.

Cont. Depending on the author, the service quality definition is more quantitative or more qualitative, is more technical or more functional, is more product or more customer oriented, is more global or more specific, and some other contrasting views. All of these several constructs about service quality, and the service's unique characteristics, lend us to conclude that service quality is a complex problem.

Most important conclusion from executives' responses "A set of key discrepancies or gaps exist regarding executive perceptions of service quality and the tasks associated with service delivery to customers. These gaps can be a major hurdle in attempting to deliver a service which consumers could perceive as being high quality. (PZB 1985, p.44)

REFERNCES C. Bhattacharjee “Service Marketing : Concepts, planning & implementation” Excel Book, 1st edition, Pg. 5 Valarie A. Zeithaml, Mary Jo Bitner, “Service Marketing”- Integrating Customer Focus Across The Firm, 3rd edition, Tata McGraw-Hill Publication page 32 Service Quality: A Concept Not Fully Explored PETERHERNON A. NITECKI AND DANUTA

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