The Concept of Service Quality - Case Study Example

Introduction Stiff competition in the market has resulted in service businesses seeking to differentiate themselves in order to increase their customer base and overall sales. Delivery of service quality is one of the strategies that such businesses prioritise among other factors. These organisations however encounter myriad problems in trying to measure service quality. This is considering the fact that measurement of service quality is not as objective as the measurement of quality of goods. (Chowdhury, 2005) Various scholars have come up with definitions of quality of goods that cannot be transferred to service quality. This is highly influenced by the characteristics of services that generally make the definition of service quality an intricate venture. It is imperative to note that the characteristics are quite inherent in nature. This aspect has made many scholars to describe service quality as an elusive and abstract concept. This paper therefore defines and discusses the concept of service quality. It further illustrates the difficulties in measuring service quality. (Parasuraman, A. and Berry, 1988) The concept of service quality Service quality is defined as a set of factors that are interrelated in nature that relate to the way consumers of service are treated. This includes aspects of responsiveness, understanding of customers, reliability, courtesy, efficiency, effectiveness, accessibility, empathy and honesty among other factors. In the venture to understand and even define service quality, some scholars came up with a measuring scale for service quality called SERVQUAL. Service quality can be defined in terms of perceived quality. This is mostly the consumer’s view about the overall superiority or excellence of the service received. It is explained to be highly influenced by a consumer’s attitude in as far as expectations and satisfaction is concerned. It has been noted that consumers and researchers have very differing definitions of quality. While researchers define it conceptually, consumers define it perceptually. In this case, consumers tend to define quality in a humanistic way while researchers are objective in their definition. In all the above definitions various conclusions can be drawn as follows; Dimensions of service quality It is evident that consumers define service quality in approximately ten dimensions. These include the accessibility of the service. In this case an easily accessed service narrows down to quality. The other aspect is courtesy of the service giver. The lack of courtesy of the service giver is therefore categorised into poor quality. The other dimension of service quality is overall understanding or knowledge of the customer. In this case, a service provider who knows his customers can be termed to be providing quality services. Communication is also a very essential dimension of quality services. This is according to consumers’ view. (Gronroos, 2007) Other dimensions include security, responsiveness, tangibles and credibility. Tangibles in this case refer to the machinery and equipment found within the organisation. This means that up to date equipment can be narrowed down to quality services. These dimensions helped in implementation of the SERVQUAL scale. Perceptions and expectations Research shows that service quality is highly related to consumer perceptions and expectations. This is in relation to what they strongly feel that a service provider should present or offer. The perceptions also emanate from what other similar organisations dealing with the same service offer. (Hjorth-Anderson, 1984) This is gained by experience and they compare the services in organisations providing similar services. The best service provider therefore becomes quality service provider and is used as a reference point to the others. This therefore becomes the perception and expectation whenever the consumers seek similar services. Quality and satisfaction Service quality is also related to the level or degree of satisfaction achieved by the consumers. This is highly related to prior feelings and expectations Satisfaction is therefore related to a specific transaction during service delivery between the service provider and the consumer. (Jacoby and Olson, 1985) Difficulties in measuring service quality Characteristics of services The overall nature of services makes the measurement of service quality quite difficult. There are various characteristics of services that have played a great role to this fact. They include perishabilty, intangibility, heterogeneity and inseparability. In this case, it is known that services are intangible. (Yang, 2003) This means that they cannot be touched, it is not possible to taste, feel, see, hear or smell before they are purchased. The fact that services are intangible makes it difficult for consumers to describe or even evaluate the services received as compared to products. This aspect actually makes it very difficult to measure service quality since the dimensions of service quality are accrued from customers in terms of their overall satisfaction. The other characteristic is inseparability of services. This basically means that services cannot be separated from the service provider and the consumer. This is whereby the delivery and consumption is simultaneous in nature. In this case, it is difficult for consumers to evaluate the quality of services delivered without linking to the service provider. (Kang and James, 2004) It is also quite difficult for an external party to evaluate the quality of services provided if the party is not the consumer. It is such that the consumer cannot give someone else to confirm quality aspects. This makes it quite hard to carry out the measurement of service quality. Services are also perishable. This means that they cannot be stored for future use. This also means that the consumer cannot store them for analysis by another party. This definitely means that inspection of quality cannot be postponed till when the environment is conducive or to be evaluated by another person. This also makes it hard to some up with measurements of service quality because they are highly perishable and can only be analysed or evaluated by the consumer. Services are also highly heterogeneous in nature. This means that there is very high variability in the deliveries of services. Services are delivered by different people and this affects what the consumer perceives. Sometimes a service in the same organisation can be delivered by many people making the evaluation even more complex in nature. (Parasuraman and Valarie 1985) The service delivered by the same person on different days can also vary. There is also very highly flexibility that is characterised in the service industry. This makes service providers try to customise the service and therefore measurement of service quality becomes a difficult task altogether. Variations in customer expectations and perceptions As earlier on illustrated, service quality is highly defined by the perceptions and expectations of customers. This therefore differs from one consumer to the next. This means that different customers expect different aspects of service delivery. Furthermore, a single customer can change his or her perceptions and expectations on service quality. These various make it very difficult to measure service quality since the aspects of service quality defined by some customers may not cut across the board. Customers’ perceptions and expectations are quite dynamic. This is whereby customers’ expectations keep changing The nature of measurement tools Various tools of measuring service quality have been invented by researchers. An example is the SERVQUAL model that is highly incorporated by many organisations in the twenty first century. The nature of such measurement tools however make it very difficult to measure service quality. This is considering the fact that the tools themselves are not objective but very subjective in nature. They are subject to the customers views who usually have diverse perceptions and expectations. The tools used for measuring service quality lack the homogeneity necessary in measuring quality. The nature of measurement tools makes it difficult for service quality measurement to be verified by another person and the measurement is only in the capacity of the consumer of the service. (Bhimani and Mulder, 2001) Quantification of dimensions Various dimensions of service quality have been put forth by scholars. They include security, responsiveness, tangibles and credibility. Other dimensions include accessibility, empathy, assurance and reliability. Analysis of these dimensions shows that they can only be elaborated by the consumer of the service making it even more difficult for another person to measure. They are quite subjective in nature. One customer can be happy about a service and another customer agitated about the same service provided by the same person at the same time. (Porter, 2004) An overall analysis of the dimensions shows that they cannot be quantified. For example courtesy as a dimension cannot be quantified. One cannot say that the courtesy received from the service provider was ninety percent and another had twenty percent courtesy. This is the same case on empathy. A customer cannot say that the responsiveness of the customer care representative was rated sixty out of a hundred without justifying the quantification. The difficulty in quantifying of the dimensions also makes it very difficult to carry out measurement. (Sekaran, 2003) Difficulty in putting in place standards It is very easy to carry out measurement of products because there are standards that the products have to achieve. For instance, a standard can be put such that a product is of a specific weight, colour, speed and volume etc. For instance the weight of a product can be hundred grams. (Zeithaml and Bitner, 2000) To ascertain the quality based on weight factor, the product has to weigh one hundred grams. In the case of services, there are no standards set that can be used to test or measure the quality of services. One can ask the question; what is the standard for customer care services? There are no specific set standards for this. One cannot say he wanted customer care services of level ten and received of level five or three. This therefore explains the difficulty in carrying out measurement of service quality. Interconnectivity of dimensions in a service This factor also makes the measurement of service quality a difficult task. A single service can have so many dimensions therein. For instance, customer care service can have the aspect of courtesy, empathy, efficiency, effectiveness and even reliability. A customer may have been satisfied with the aspect of courtesy but highly dissatisfied by the rest of the dimensions but left the premises feeling happy. (Sekaran, 2003) It is difficult to narrow down in such a case whether the service quality was poor or not. Or if the other dimensions such as empathy, efficiency, effectiveness and reliability were met but the service provider was not courteous, one cannot make conclusion on service quality. This makes it very difficult to carry out measurement of service quality. (Parasuraman, A. and Berry, 1988) Conclusion In conclusion, many service businesses in the twenty first century are striving to achieve quality. Measurement of service quality is however not an easy task. Many tools of measuring service quality have been invented such as SERVQUAL. Despite these being in place measurement of service quality still remains to be difficult. Various factors have contributed to this. They include the characteristics of services like perishability, intangibility, heterogeneity and inseparability. Other factors include the tools used for measurement, quantification of dimensions and variations in customers’ perceptions. Read More