Consumer Measurement Factors for Service Quality - Assignment Example

Case Study Question It is important for Dr. Wright to understand how consumers are likely to judge the quality of the service experience. What components do customers use to judge service quality and how does Dr. Wright perform on these dimensions? How would Dr. Wright and HMO dentists compare on these dimensions? Answer Consumer Measurement Factors for Service Quality In this day and age the importance of providing adequate service experience is critical. With the increase in competition among the service providers customers have become increasingly knowledgeable about the service quality factors (Mosahab, 72). The decision making process is mostly influenced by the level of services they will avail from their visit to the outlet of the service provider. This is the reason that companies are increasingly focusing on the importance of improving the service quality of their business. It is of critical importance that Dr. Wright understands the process and factors through which her patients analyze the service quality experience. Her profession is completely service oriented which means that the traffic incoming of her patients depends on the level of services she provides. Patients would likely to judge the service quality level on the basis of different factors. Dr. Wrights services will add value to the valuable customers and positive recognition in her profession is extremely important as more and more people will recommend her services. So, it is important for her to understand well the measures the customers may use to analyze the service quality of the services being received at her clinic. Components of Service Quality There are different methods that Dr. Wright can use to find out the factors of service quality, but ServQual is an easy method to employ and find out the factors of service quality according to needs of the customer (Kandampully, Mok and Sparks, 54). The method was introduced in the 1980 by three academicians of USA namely Parasuraman, Berry and Zelthaml (Dewi et al., 176). This method measure the level of service on different dimensions which are most likely to be in the minds of the customers. The five dimensions that this method uses are Tangibles, Reliability, Responsiveness, Assurance, and Empathy (Grigoroudis and Siskos, 67). In the tangible dimensions, the patients of Dr. Wright will evaluate her services based on the physical evidence available to them. This may include the location of the clinic, the equipment, infrastructure, the organization of the clinic, etc. So, she has to be very careful of the fact that cleanliness of the clinic and environment of the clinic are properly maintained. Moreover, she has to ensure to her patients that the equipments she is using are properly sterilized and according to the standards of dentistry. The next factor of reliability is an important aspect as it will decide her customer traffic. In this dimension she has to be careful in different dimensions e.g. abiding by appointments, billing process, patient record and most importantly correct diagnosis of the disease. The third dimension of responsiveness is another important aspect of her profession. Since she will be the only dentist in her new facility it is important that a proper appointment plan is sorted out so that no inconvenience is created for the patients / customers. There should be plans for handling emergency cases as well. The fourth dimension of assurance asks her to exhibit her knowledge and skills in order o provide the services desired by her customers. It also includes the support staff that she will employ and hence they should also work in accordance to the set guidelines in order to meet customer demand ultimately enhancing the reputation of the clinic. Empathy, the fifth and last factor calls for paying attention to customer’s queries and needs. In this dimension, Dr. Wright has to train her employees so that they know the ways to listen properly about the problems of the customer/patients. After hearing out the problems, the employees need to perform the required respective actions. Dr. Wright, herself, has to show great care while listening to the issues of her patients as it will allow the patients to have a feeling of being valued and also a feeling of being cared. Comparison between Dr. Wright Facility and HMO The gaps between the two facilities seem big as HMO is hampered by the low funds availability while Dr. Wright has recently invested in the new facility. The facility of Dr. Wright will more likely to fulfill the above mentioned dimensions as she is in better position to serve customers on these dimensions. The major reason for her potential to serve her patients on these dimensions is the availability of updated and desired resources like equipments, staff, clinic environment, etc. Question What unique challenges does Dr. Wright (or really any service marketer) face in marketing her dental practice? How has Dr. Wright used her service marketing mix/strategy to specifically deal with service marketing’s unique challenges – i.e., explicitly link her specific service marketing strategy elements with the unique challenge(s) that element helps to address? Answer Challenges of Marketing Dental Practice The Dentist profession is by no means an easy profession to carry out successfully. It requires hard work and careful diagnosis of the problem so that the right treatment can be given to the patients. There is a general trend observed of people avoiding to visit the dentist and using household methods to cure their dental related problems. Moreover, the general perception that dentistry being an expensive luxury to afford, makes it more difficult for the dentists to market their services and attract customer towards them. People prefer to use the advice of their family doctor if they face any problem related to teeth. This practice can be observed among many families in the society, any problems related to teeth and the people consult their family physician rather than going to a dentist. The major problem in marketing the services like dentistry is the intangibility factor. This basically depends on the action of the service provider and hence the customer does not get the physical and in some cases instant benefit (Popa, Purcărea, and Raţiu, 1). Most people avail dental services when they feel they have a severe issue with their teeth. They do not avail the services in normal routine and the dentists have to use “visit your dentist in every six month phrase”. So, it is important for the dentists to make sure that when a patient visits them they give them proper care and treatment and try to provide some extra services in order to enhance the satisfaction level of the customer. Another major problem in marketing services is the evaluation of performance i.e. quality (Lamb et al., 200). In product oriented profession it is easy to evaluate based on the specification of the product while in services it is totally dependent on the perception and expectation of the customer i.e. whether the organization is able to meet the expectations of the customers or not (De Chernatony and Fiona). So it is important that whenever a patient visits the dentist, there should be a full involvement of the service provider depicted so that the visitor gets the impression that he / she is in safe hands (Pezeshki, 29). Creating loyalty in the service oriented business is critical for its success and these are the exact challenges that Dr. Wright will face while marketing her new facility. Another major problem she will face is justifying prices for her services. As the general perception about dental service being expensive, she will have to be careful while designing the price strategy for the services being provided. Strategy of Dr. Wright To meet the challenge of the location, she had difficulties in finding the desired location. So, she hired a architect to create an environment where customers feels satisfied and the negative point of location can somehow be catered. The main strategy that she deployed in order to cater all the above mentioned challenges is to enhance the environment of the facility so that when a customer visits he / she does not get the feeling of being at an alien place. Just for this purpose she had a small conference room with toys so that the visitors do not have to worry about their kids visiting them. The installation of a DVD player was a step to make “waiting” easy for the visitors. The important step that she took was the placement of helpful literature about the dentistry which will unconsciously compel the patient to visit the dentist frequently. The service personnel were trained to provide the best possible services . The hygienists were trained to handle the routine exams and teeth cleaning. They were also assisting Dr. Wright while she was performing her services. She ensured that the service personnel show the right kind of attitude while performing their job roles as this is critical in marketing her profession. She also took their feedback in improving the services as they were the one who welcome and see off the visitors. She tried to manage the appointment procedure and made a policy that no customer will wait for more than 20 minutes. If there is a delay expected the customer will be informed in advance via telephone. So, basically she used the strategy of enhancing the experience during the visit to market her service and try to utilize the word of mouth strategy to attract more customers or patients (Lovelock, 10). Dr. Wright needs to realize that to become successful in the dentistry profession, she needs to give some time to her work and once when customers starts to receive good and successful treatments then this will work upon building a positive image of her services in the consumer market. Works Cited De Chernatony, L, and Fiona Harris. “The challenge of financial services branding: majoring on category or brand values?” University Business August (2000) : n. pag. Dewi, F.D., Sudjana, G. and Oesman. Y.M. Patient satisfaction analysis on service quality of dental health care based on empathy and responsiveness. Dental Research Journal. 8(4) (2011): 172-177. Web. Grigoroudis, E. and Siskos, Y. Customer Satisfaction Evaluation. London: Springer Science Media, 2010. Print. Kandampully, J, Mok .C, Sparks B.A. Service Quality Management in Hospitality, Tourism, and Leisure. New York: The Haworth Hospitality Press, 2001. Print. Lamb, C. W., Joseph F. Hair and Carl Mc Daniel. Marketing. Cengage Learning South Western, 2011. Print. (Lamb et al., 200) Lovelock, Christopher H. “Classifying Services to Gain Marketing.” Journal of Marketing 47.3 (2011) : 9-20. Mosahab, Rahim. “Service Quality , Customer Satisfaction and Loyalty : A Test of Mediation.” International Business 3.4 (2010) : 72-80. Pezeshki, V. “Three dimensional modelling of customer satisfaction, retention and loyalty for measuring quality of service.” Engineering 2010 1-208. Print. Popa, Purcărea and Raţiu. Current Challenges for Healthcare Services and the Opportunities Created by the Marketing Abilities. Journal of Medicine and Life. 1(1), n.d. pp. 1. Web Read More