Lecture 3: Perceived Service Quality and Customer Satisfaction Flashcards
What is Service Quality?
Unlike Customer Satisfaction, it doesn’t need to be experienced.
What is Perceived Service Quality (PSQ)?
- Consumer’s judgement (across multiple service encounters) about an entity’s overall excellence or superiority
- Summary assessment of performance relative to a reference standard (a customer’s ideal expectations), rather than simply an offering’s attributes’ performance.
- Expectations are adaptive to consumer learning and change over time
What defines expectations?
Expectations determined by accumulated information:
- Stored customer knowledge from own experience
- Other customers’ experiences
- Firm’s strategies (ex: price, advertising, market share, and reputation)
- Media Reports
What are the 3 types of expectations?
Will: Performance levels a customer predicts an offering is going to deliver
Ideal: Performance levels reflecting a customer’s ideal preferences across all offerings in a category.
Should: what customer believes an offering OUGHT TO deliver
How is satisfaction defined? And what elements involved within satisfaction?
- a consumer’s post-consumption judgement (processes & outcome)
- An affective (emotion) state or feeling whether customers’ needs, desires, and expectations are met or exceeded.
- Satisfaction’s elements:
- - Cognitive element (thinking and evaluation)
- -Affective element (emotion and feelings) - Emotions may include: frustration, anger, disappointment, alienation, disgust, etc.
Distinguish between Satisfaction/Dissatisfaction (SD) and Service Quality (SQ)Distinguish between Satisfaction/Dissatisfaction (SD) and Service Quality (SQ)
SD vs SQ
(1) Experience dependent
| Assessable prior to actual experience
(2) Predominantly Cognitive |
Both Cognitive and Affective
(3) Short Term Temporal Focus
(transaction-specific judgment) |
Long Term Temporal Focus
(Overall Assessment)
(4) Ideal expectations used |
Will expectations used
SQ is a determinant (input) of SD.
What is the evolution of service quality?
- Disconfirmation of expectations model
- The Nordic model
- The Gaps (PZB) Model and SERVQUAL
What and how does “Disconfirmation of Expectations Model” work?
Where:
Confirmation→ perceptions = expectations
Negative
Disconfirmation→ Perceptions < Expectations
Positive DIsconfirmation→ Perceptions > Expectations
What and how does “The Nordic Model” work?
Service on the basis of Functional and Technical Quality
Technical: what outcome gotten from the service
Funtional: way the service is delivered
- What and how does “The Gaps or PZB Model” work?
First four gaps are the result of management’s actions. Gap 5 occurs at the client level
Gap 1: The Knowledge Gap
Gap 2: The Standards Gap)
Gap 3: The Delivery Gap
Gap 4: The Communications Gap
Gap 5: The Perceived Service Quality Gap
Explain Gap 1: The Knowledge Gap and provide examples.
Client’s expected service Management Perceptions of Client’s expectations
(Difference between client’s expectations and management perceptions of client expectations. Ex: Client’s expectation can be different to what management think customer expects)
What are the key contributing factors for Gap 1: Knowledge Gap?
Key contributing factors (Gap 1):
(1) Lack of marketing research orientation
- Insufficient marketing research
- Inadequate use of research findings
- Lack of interaction between management and customers
(2) Inadequate upward communication
(3) Too many levels of management
Explain Gap 2: The Standards Gap
Gap 2 ( The Standards Gap):
Difference between management perceptions of client’s expectations and service quality specifications. ( Management may set clear quality specifications, but these may not appear to be achievable by staff)
What are
Key contributing factors to Gap 2: The Standards Gap
Key contributing factors (Gap 2):
- Inadequate management commitment to service quality
- Perception of infeasibility
- Inadequate task standardisation
- Absence of goal setting
Explain Gap 3: The Delivery Gap
The difference between service quality specifications and the service actually delivered. (Goals and service KPIs exist but ignored or not adhered to)
What are key contributing factors to Gap 3: The Delivery Gap?
- Role ambiguity
- Role conflict
- Poor employee job fit
- Poor technology job fit
- Inappropriate supervisory control system
- Lack of perceived control
- Lack of teamwork
Explain Gap 4: The Communications Gap and provide an example
External communications to target market Service Delivery
(Difference between service delivery intention and what is communicated about the service to customers.
Ex: Promises given by promotion activities are not consistent with the service delivered)
What are Key contributing factors to Gap 4: The Communications Gap?
(1) Inadequate horizontal communication between:
- Advertising and operations
- Salespeople and operations
- HR, marketing and operations
- Differences in policies and procedures across branches and departments
(2) Propensity to over-promise
Explain Gap 5:The Perceived Service Quality Gap)
Difference between what customers expect and what they receive (Gaps 1-4=5).
Service experienced is not consistent with service expected.
What does Gap 5 it results in?
Poor quality
Negative word-of- mouth
Erosion of corporate image, reputation and trust
Lost business
Define SERVQUAL and how it works in relation to gap 5 in PZB model?
- Quantitative Technique to measure perceived and experienced Service Quality (found by PZB).
- Based upon 22 generic item survey which is designed to cover the 5 broad dimensions of Service Quality.
- Subtract expectations scores from performance perception scores, either unweighted or weighted to take into consideration the relative importance of each dimension of quality, or the relative importance of different customer groups.
Measures gap 5 in the gaps model.
How it works: Respondents are asked a 7-point Likert scale (1=strongly disagree, 7=strongly agree) regarding the item about:
- Service Quality expectations in service category
- Perceived Performance
- Relative importance of each dimension of quality
What are the 5 dimensions of Service Quality!
Reliability – The ability to perform the promised service dependably and accurately.
Responsiveness – The willingness to help clients and provide prompt service
Assurance – The knowledge and courtesy of employees and their ability to convey trust and confidence
Empathy – The provision of caring, individualised attention to clients
Tangibles – The appearance of physical facilities, equipment, personnel and communications materials
What are the Criticisms of SERVQUAL?
Five dimensions may not be applicable to all service contexts
Expectations and perceived performance typically assessed at one time
Measuring expectations provides no additional information beyond what is obtained from measuring perceived performance alone, see SERVPERF.
Does not explicitly include any customer inputs in its measurements .
What are the benefits of using customer survey to measure satisfaction and service quality?
It can be used in large customer numbers and relatively cheap
