Quality in Service Marketing - Coursework Example

Quality in Service Marketing Author’s Name: Instructor’s Name: Course Name: Institutional Affiliation: Due Date: Quality in Service Marketing Quality: Significance Costs associated with the inability of a product or a service to meet customers specifications may be damaging to a business venture in many fronts, ranging from simple complaints, product returns, and repairs, warranty claims, recalls, to huge litigation costs resulting from product liability issues. Given the difficulty in gaining customer faith and loyalty, it is important that quality in service delivery be given the weight it deserves when marketing products especially in the services industry. Services are the key forces that propel economic growth in the modern society. However, the concept of quality must be engendered in every managerial aspect if tangible results are to be found in any organization. Three main forces shape the prevailing service-marketing environment: the ever-increasing competition by the private players themselves, technological advancements and the continuous shifts in the rules and regulations controlling the service sector. Because of these forces, customers are more aware of their requirements, and consequently demand higher standards of services. Their expectations are continually evolving, thereby making it more difficult for the service providers to quantify and manage services effectively. The key lies in paying attention to the critical service attributes(elements) as part of customer service management, which include satisfaction, their delight, customer relationship, service delivery among other elements. It is thus very essential to understand the sensitivity of customers to various service attributes or dimensions to stay in touch with the demands in the service sector. In other words, managers should not only consider performance while setting customer service objectives, but they also include quality variables such as responsiveness, reliability empathy, assurance, and tangibles (Payne, 1995). Because features of services are generally intangible and inseparable, customer service in the business sector is usually ranked higher than those in the manufacturing industry. Due to the difficulty of managing quality, customer service has become a part of both product and service marketing in order to maintain customer loyalty. With increased competition and improved technologies, customers have hiked their standard demands. For instance in the insurance industry, the difficulty in coping with the customers’ demands has forced firms to generally raise awareness levels, introduce innovative products and increase their market penetration rate. In fact, some of these firms such as the ICICI PruLife are lucky to have successfully fulfilled customers’ requirements by introducing a range of thirteen new products to meet the customers’ satisfaction. Many other firms have also followed suit by taking more focused approach, making fundamental changes in the types of products they offer in a bid to fill the gaps regarded as potentially destructive to business life (Sharma, 2002). Apparently, technology has aided the expansion of customers’ knowledge base, and as such the reach and the capacity to respond to each customer needs has increased in leaps and bounds. With multiple touch points, that includes customer contact centers, websites, emails, snail-mail, and facsimile; customers are now able to reach these insurance firms more directly, easily and fast to pour out their grievances, claims or even appreciations should need arise. As a result, response has drastically been revolutionized time responses thereby offering immediate feedback whether positive or negative according to Zeithaml and Bitner, (1996). In away, the drastic changes in strategic communication have enable cultivation of customer loyalty through quality and standardized communication channels hitherto unavailable before. Customers are now having more access to information relating to firms and as such are able to keenly choose accordingly on which firms’ services deserves him or her most. This raises the bar even higher for competitors and thus compelling them to up their game, always on top of customers’ specifications, to stay in business through cutting-edge reputation. In the banking sector, the increased sophistication of both financial management and customers needs has resulted into the creation of more responsive product and services as an avenue of wading off competitors and keeping the growth of customer base on course. Indeed, tradeoffs trust and products, relationships and economies as well as service and efficiency has been at the core in customers’ choice making concerning suppliers of such services. Thanks be to advances in technology, delays in customer service delivery, complaints handling, applications processing, among other important services are now in history (Zeithaml and Bitner, 1996). In fact, these kinds of services has not only enabled the retention of existing clients but also played a crucial role in attracting new customers thereby enabling the expansion of profit margins. Managing Quality There are two distinct perception of quality measurement: Internal and external. Accordingly, internal perspective defines quality as zero defects, that is, doing it right on the first attempt, or conforming to the requirements. The external view accounts for the perceptions, expectations, satisfactions, attitudes, and delight derived by the customers. The external view is apparently gaining importance in the light of increasing tastes, awareness, and growing expectations of the customer. In particular, Parasuraman, Zeithaml and Berry (1985) seems to have captured it well they defined service quality as the extent of discrepancy between consumers view point and their expectations with regards to different dimensions of the service quality, which can affect behaviors in the future. In other words, service quality to a customer depends on the rating of his or her perception and the expected service. In a sense, this very definition shows clearly the elusiveness, indistinctiveness, and the abstract nature of the concept of service quality. Its measurements are not accurate and are subject to personal judgment, which varies across individual customers. It is therefore not possible to have a single unit measuring service quality. A product or service is thus rated satisfactory based on the discrepancy between expectations and perception, which in itself is susceptible to wide variations. Given the abstract nature of customers’ requirements, Gauging service quality has been such a daunting task. Researchers and practitioners have often resorted to direct questioning customers to mentally approximate “Performance” against their “expectations” as a way of streamlining their services in conformance with clients needs. Through such estimations, practitioners have come to believe that “perception” is a better evaluator of customers’ valuations and interests. Zeithaml and Bitner (1996) in their piece of work found out that customers hold two different types of expectations: “Desired’ performance (what the customers believe is accurate) and “Adequate “performance (a level which falls within acceptability range in light of uncontrollable circumstances). Obviously, “adequate performance’ falls below “desired performance”, and so it is incumbent upon service providers to keep pace with emerging trends of customers’ tastes and preferences often based on “Zone of tolerance” . Service quality is a complex network of numerous dimensions. In their quest to interrogate this subject, Parasuraman, Zeithaml and Berry (1988, pg 23) developed and refined a system known as SERVQUAL battery to better manage service quality. This system of measurement was based on twenty service items, which later summarized into five basic elements namely Reliability, tangibles, responsiveness, empathy, and assurance. Reliability captures the ability of the service providers to perform services accurately. It includes the capacity to “do it right the first time”- a component most revere by customers as important as Berry and Parasuraman (1991) point out. The catch with reliability is that an over promise of services may undermine customers’ trust and tolerance. Tangibles consist of all physical resources (Berry and Parasuraman 1991, p. 16). Though it is rated the least among the five dimensions, tangibles are still a key service component. Responsiveness represents the capacity to offers on-site solutions to clients (Parasuraman, Zeithaml and Berry 1988, p.22). This attribute takes into account time dimension as a critical component of service quality. Assurance reflects the capacity to inspire confidence and trust through knowledge and courtesy of the service providers (Parasuraman, Zeithaml and Berry 1988, p. 23). Customers expect nothing less than safety transactions devoid of misguided information. Otherwise, this attribute alone can result into massive loss of customers due to the inability to match words with actions. The final attribute to service quality is empathy, which involves individualized attention given to customers (Parasuraman, Zeithaml and Berry 1988, p.24). Winning the customers approval demands responses with a personal touch. Success in business organizations depends largely on the attention given to clients. Overall, service providers need to have a multi-faceted approach to when dealing customers’ quality service demands. While the five dimensions may be enjoying considerable support across industries about mapping out marketing strategies, they are not sufficient. Optimal deployment of resources to each of these dimensions to obtain best value in tandem with customers’ satisfaction and retention is still very elusive in a wide range of fields. Investigations into the actual performance with reference to zone of tolerance paint a grim picture. In the banking industry, for instance, perception of performance seems to be below the “adequate level of performance” across the service attributes. That is to say, their services are far much off the quality rating with respect to responsiveness, reliability, assurance, and empathy. In essence, executives are often unaware of what features indicate high quality to customers in advance, what features to accompany a service to meet customer needs, and what performance levels on these features are required to deliver quality services. This insight suggests that service marketers may not always recognize and understand what customers expect in a service (Sachdev and Harsh, 2002). The gap between customer expectation and the executive perceptions and specifications of these expectations will always have a vital impact on the customers’ valuations of service quality, his or her viewpoint, and standpoint. References List Parasuraman, A. Zeithaml, V.A., and Berry, L.L., 1988. SERVQUAL: A Multiple Item, Scale for measuring consumer perception of service quality. Journal of Retailing 64 (Spring):12-40. Parasuraman, A. Zeithaml, V.A. and Berry, L.L., 1985. A conceptual model of service quality and the implications for future research. Journal of Marketing, 49 (Fall):41-50. Parasuraman, A. Zeithaml, V.A. and Berry, L.L., 1994. Reassessment of expectation as comparison standard in measuring service quality: Implication for future research’, Journal of Marketing, 58 (Jan):11-24. Parasuraman, A. Berry, L.L. and Zeithaml, V.A., 1991. Understanding Customer Expectations of Service. Sloan Management Review, Spring, pp. 39-48. Payne, A., 1995. The essence of service Marketing. London: Prentice-Hall International (UK) Ltd. Sachdev, S.B. and Harsh V.V., 2002. Customer expectations and service quality dimensions consistency: A study of select industries. Journal of Management Research, (April), pp. 43-52. Shikha, S., 2002. Changing face of life insurance in India. Insurance Chronicle, (Dec.), pp. 24- 27. Zeithaml, V.A. and Bitner, M.J., 1996. Customer expectation of services. New Delhi: McGraw Hill. Read More