Chapter – 6

Service Quality

6

Service Management (5e)

Operations, Strategy, Information Technology

By

Fitzsimmons and Fitzsimmons

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Describe the five dimensions of service quality. Use the service quality gap model to diagnose quality

problems. Illustrate how Taguchi methods and poka-yoke methods are

applied to quality design. Perform service quality function deployment. Construct a statistical process control chart. Develop unconditional service guarantees. Plan for service recovery. Perform a walk-through audit (WtA)

Learning ObjectivesLearning Objectives

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Each customer contact is called a moment of truth.

You have the ability to either satisfy or dissatisfy them when you contact them.

A service recovery is satisfying a previously dissatisfied customer and making them a loyal customer.

Moments of TruthMoments of Truth

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Reliability:

Perform promised service dependably and accurately.

Example: receive mail at same time each day.

Responsiveness:

Willingness to help customers promptly.

Example: avoid keeping customers waiting for no apparent reason.

Quick recovery, if service failure occurs

Dimensions of Service QualityDimensions of Service Quality

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Assurance: Ability to convey trust and confidence.

Give a feeling that customers’ best interest is in your heart

Example: being polite and showing respect for customer.

Empathy: Ability to be approachable, caring, understanding and relating with customer

needs.

Example: being a good listener.

Tangibles: Physical facilities and facilitating goods.

Example: cleanliness.

Dimensions of Service QualityDimensions of Service Quality

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Word of mouth

Personal needs

Past experience

Expectedservice

Perceivedservice

Service Quality Dimensions

ReliabilityResponsiveness

AssuranceEmpathyTangibles

Service Quality Assessment1. Expectations exceeded ES<PS (Quality surprise)2. Expectations met ES~PS (Satisfactory quality)3. Expectations not met ES>PS (Unacceptable quality)

Perceived Service QualityFigure 6.1 (pp 128)

Perceived Service QualityFigure 6.1 (pp 128)

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Service Quality Gap ModelService Quality Gap Model

Customer

Perceptions

Customer

Expectations

Service

Delivery

Service Standards

ManagementPerceptions of Customer Expectations

Managing the Evidence

Conformance Service Design

Understanding the Customer

Customer Satisfaction GAP 5

Customer / Marketing Research

GAP 1

Conformance GAP 3

Communication GAP 4

Design GAP 2

Gaps in Service QualityGaps in Service Quality

Gap1: Market research gap Management may not understand how customers formulate their

expectations from past experience, advertising, communication with friends Improve market research Foster better communication between employees and its frontline

employees Reduce the number of levels of management that distance the customer

Gap 2: Design gap Management unable to formulate target level of service to meet

customer expectations and translate them to specifications Setting goals and standardizing service delivery tasks can close the gap

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Continued….Continued….

Gap 3: Conformance gap Actual delivery of service cannot meet the specifications set by

management Lack of teamwork Poor employee selection Inadequate training Inappropriate job design

Gap 4: Communication gap Discrepancy between service delivery and external

communication Exaggerated promises in advertising Lack of information provided to contact personnel to give

customers

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Continued…..Continued…..

Gap 5: Customer expectations and perceptions gap Customer satisfaction depends on minimizing the four gaps that

are associated with service delivery Companies try to measure the gap between expected service and

perceived service through the use of surveys (ex. Fig. 6.2) SERVQUAL – measures the five dimensions (table 6.1)

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Scope of service qualityScope of service quality

View quality from five perspectives

Content – are standard procedures being followed?

Process – is the sequence of events in the service process appropriate?

Structure – are the physical facilities and organizational design adequate for the service?

Outcome – what change in the status has the service effected? Is the consumer satisfied?

Impact – what is the long-range effect of the service on the consumer?

See table 6.3 ( pp 137) – measuring service quality for a health clinic.

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Quality Service by DesignQuality Service by Design

1. Quality service by design

2. Taguchi method

3. Poka-Yoke

4. Quality function deployment

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Budget Hotel example (table 6.4 (pp. 138)

Supporting facility

Design of the building

Facilitating goods

Room furnishings like: bedside tables, carpet cleaning

Explicit services

Maids are trained to clean and make up roooms

Implicit services

Pleasant appearances of individuals at front office

1. Quality in the Service Package1. Quality in the Service Package

2. Taguchi Method (Robustness)2. Taguchi Method (Robustness)

Robust designs to serve under adverse conditions

Robustness concept also applied to the manufacturing process – for example using online computer to notify the cleaning staff when the room has been vacated

Taguchi emphasized that quality was achieved by consistently meeting the design specifications

Cost to society of poor quality was measured by the square of the deviation from the target (see fig. 6.4 pp. 139)

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3. Poka-Yoke (Fail safing)3. Poka-Yoke (Fail safing)

Shigeo Shingo observed that errors occurred, not because employees were incompetent, but because of interruptions in routines or lapses in attention.

He advocated adoption of Poka-Yoke methods – foolproof devices to prevent employee mistakes. Example, hotel reservation employee is expected to make eye-

contact with customer. So Poka-Yoke is to ask the employee to enter the eye-color of the customer.

Since customers also play an active role in service-delivery so you need Poka-Yoke for them to prevent them from making errors. Example, frames at airport check-in counters to help customers

determine if their bag can go in overhead bin as hand luggage.

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Classification of Service Failures withPoka-Yoke Opportunities (table 6.5)

Classification of Service Failures withPoka-Yoke Opportunities (table 6.5)

Server ErrorsTask:

Doing work incorrectly

Doing work not required

Doing work in the wrong order

Doing work too slowly

Treatment:

Failure to listen to customer

Failure to acknowledge the customer

Failure to react appropriately

Tangible:

Failure to clean facilities

Failure to wear clean uniform

Failure to control environmental factors

Failure to proofread documents

Customer ErrorsPreparation:

Failure to bring necessary materials

Failure to understand role in transaction

Failure to engage in correct service

Encounter:

Failure to remember steps in process

Failure to follow system flow

Failure to specify desires sufficiently

Failure to follow instructions

Resolution:

Failure to signal service failure

Failure to learn from experience

Failure to adjust expectations

Failure to execute post-encounter action

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Allows to incorporate the voice of the customer into the design of the product/service – by translating customer satisfaction into identifiable and measurable conformance specifications for product or service design

1. Establish the aim of the project – assess Village Volvo’s competitive position

2. Determine customer expectations (rows) – interviews etc.

3. Describe the elements of the service (columns)

4. Roof of the house - note the strength of relationship between the service elements

5. Body of the matrix – relationship between service elements (columns) and customer expectations (rows)

6. Weighting the service elements – rating customer expectations; getting weighted scores for each column (basement)

7. Basement – service element improvement difficulty rank

8. Assessment of competition – RHS (comparison on customer satisfaction) Comparison on strength of the service elements

4. Quality Function Deployment4. Quality Function Deployment

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House of QualityHouse of Quality

Relative

1 2 3 4 5 Customer Expectations

Reliability

Responsiveness

Assurance

Empathy

Tangibles

Comparison with Volvo Dealer

Weighted score

Improvement difficulty rank

O O

O Weak

Medium

* Strong

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Service Elements

Relationships

127 82 63 102 65

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Compare your performance with other companies known for being ‘the best in class’

For every quality dimension, some firm has earned the reputation for being the best in class

Learn how the management has achieved to be the best in class to correct your process

5. Benchmarking5. Benchmarking

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Impressions about service quality are determined by both the outcome and the process (because customers are a part of service delivery)

Walk through audit is a customer-focused survey to find the areas for improvement Entire customer experience is traced from beginning to end, and a flow chart

of customer interaction with service system is made

Customer is asked for his/her impressions on each of these interactions

Customers can provide anew perspective to service – they can notice things easily as they are new in the system

Service managers and employees can get de-sensitize to their surroundings and also may not notice marginal decreases in service levels.

6. Walk-Through-Audit(Figure 6.7, pp. 145)

6. Walk-Through-Audit(Figure 6.7, pp. 145)

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1. Cost of Quality (Juran)

2. Service Process Control

3. Statistical Process Control (Deming)

4. Unconditional Service Guarantee

Achieving Service QualityAchieving Service Quality

1. Cost of Quality1. Cost of Quality

Products can be returned or exchanged if faulty; but what recourse does customer have to faulty services?

Legal recourse – for example in medical may lead to more procedures and tests and more paperwork leading to higher cost

Prevention cost Costs associated with activities that keep failure from happening and minimize detection

cost

Detection cost Costs incurred to ascertain the condition of a service to determine whether it conforms to

safety standards

Internal failure Costs incurred to correct nonconforming work prior to delivery to the customer

External failure Costs incurred to correct nonconforming work after delivery to customer or to correct work

that did not satisfy a customer’s special needs

$1 in invested in prevention = $100 in detection = $10,000 in failure cost (Juran)

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Failure costs Detection costs Prevention costs External failure: Loss of future business Process control Quality planning Negative word-of-mouth Peer review Training program Liability insurance Supervision Quality audits Legal judgments Customer comment card Data acquisition and analysis Interest penalties Inspection Recruitment and selection Supplier evaluation

Internal failure: Scrapped forms Rework Recovery: Expedite disruption Labor and materials

Costs of Service Quality(Bank Example, table 6.6, pp. 149)

Costs of Service Quality(Bank Example, table 6.6, pp. 149)

2. Service Process Control2. Service Process Control

The control of service quality can be viewed as a feedback control system – where output is compared with a standard.

The deviation from the standard is communicated back to the input, and adjustments are made to the process to keep the output within the defined range.

Difficult to implement an effective control cycle for service due to the intangible nature of service, which makes direct measurement difficult – so we proxy or surrogate measures.

Simultaneous nature of production and consumption – prevents any direct intervention in the service process to observe conformance to requirements.

Consequently, we ask customers to express their impression of service quality after the consumption – by which time we are too late to avoid service failure.

Instead, we try to focus on delivery process by employing SPC

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Resources

Identify reasonfor

nonconformance

Establish measure of performance

Monitorconformance torequirements

Take corrective

action

Service concept

Customer input

Customer output

Service process

Service Process Control(Figure 6.9, pp 150)

Service Process Control(Figure 6.9, pp 150)

3. Service Process Control3. Service Process Control

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Unconditional (L.L. Bean) – without exception

Easy to understand and communicate (Bennigan’s) – to the customer

Meaningful (Domino’s Pizza) – it should provide compensation that is meaningful

Easy to invoke (Cititravel) – not to fill out cumbersome forms or go through a lengthy process

Easy to collect (Manpower) – should be given soon after the service lapse and after a significant time

4. Unconditional Service Guarantee: Customer View

4. Unconditional Service Guarantee: Customer View

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Focuses on customers (British Airways)

Sets clear standards (FedEx) – knows when the service has failed

Guarantees feedback (Manpower) – gets data on service failure because dissatisfied customers have an incentive to complain

Promotes an understanding of the service delivery system (Bug Killer) – you will have a better understanding of your service delivery process

Builds customer loyalty by making expectations explicit

Unconditional Service Guarantee: Management View

Unconditional Service Guarantee: Management View

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The average business only hears from 4% of their customers who are dissatisfied with their products or services. Of the 96% who do not bother to complain, 25% of them have serious problems.

The 4% complainers are more likely to stay with the supplier than are the 96% non-complainers.

About 60% of the complainers would stay as customers if their problem was resolved and 95% would stay if the problem was resolved quickly.

A dissatisfied customer will tell between 10 and 20 other people about their problem.

A customer who has had a problem resolved by a company will tell about 5 people about their situation.

Customer Feedback andWord-of-Mouth (Table 6.9, pp. 156)

Customer Feedback andWord-of-Mouth (Table 6.9, pp. 156)

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Service Recovery Framework(Figure 6.13, pp. 156)

Service Recovery Framework(Figure 6.13, pp. 156)

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Service RecoveryService Recovery

Disasters can be turned into loyal customers by proper and rapid service recovery

Frontline workers, therefore, need to be properly trained and given the discretion to make things right.

Approaches to service recovery

Case-by-case addresses each customer’s complaint individually but could lead to perception of unfairness.

Systematic response uses a protocol to handle complaints but needs prior identification of critical failure points and continuous updating.

Early intervention attempts to fix problem before the customer is affected.

Substitute service allows rival firm to provide service but could lead to loss of customer.

INSPECTIONINSPECTION

Opinion surveys - about quality of service

100 percent inspection - every unit is checked; fatigue error unless automated

First article inspection - usually after the process is set up

Destructive testing

Acceptance sampling - based on statistical sampling table, the associate checks a random or stratified sample from a larger lot. If the sample is within the acceptable quality level, the lot passes inspection.

Process focusProcess focus

Process capability means capable of meeting customer requirements or specifications.

COMMON CAUSE vs SPECIAL CAUSE VARIATION

COMMON CAUSE vs SPECIAL CAUSE VARIATION

Assignable-cause variation: these can be assigned to specific causes

Common cause variation: random and harder to trace. This is system wide and requires management decision.

Statistical Control: when a process output is free of all special cause variation, it is said to be in statistical control or simply in control.

A process in control may still have common cause variation. Continuous improvement aims at constantly working to reduce common cause variation.

VARIABLES AND ATTRIBUTESVARIABLES AND ATTRIBUTES

In order to study process variation, we need process output data. This comes in two forms: variables and attributes data

Variables data result from measuring or computing the amount of or value of a quality characteristic. This data is continuous.

Attributes data - measurement is not required, just a classifying judgment: maybe yes or no for friendly service; good or bad for a car wash; small, medium, large melons.

TOOLS FOR PROCESS IMPROVEMENTTOOLS FOR PROCESS IMPROVEMENT

Coarse Grained Analysis Check Sheet – historical record of observations and represents the

source of data to begin analysis and problem identfication.

Histograms - display frequency data collected over a period of time. It is more structured than a check sheet, has equal-interval numeric categories on the X-axis of an X-Y graph (see figure 6.18)

Pareto Analysis (figure 6.19): helps differentiate between trivial and important causes by ordering problems by their relative frequency in a descending order – focus efforts on the problem that offers the greatest potential improvement.

Process flowchart: it may show the steps that are unnecessary, or that need to be rearranged

Fishbone chart (cause and effect diagram): here the team works backwards from the target for improvement on the spin bone, identifying causes down through the ‘bone structure’. The lowest level of detail may reveal root causes, which need to be worked upon. (5 whys) (figure 6.21)

continuedcontinued

Fine Grained Tools Scatter diagram and correlation: useful for complex processes

where cause-effect relationships are unclear. It visually shows the relationship between two variables (figure 6.22)

Run diagram: it is simply a running plot of a certain measured quality characteristic. It could be number of minutes each successive airplane departs late. Or number of customers visiting the complaint desk of a store each day. The company may specify the upper limit and the lower limit. ( figure 6.17).

Process control charts: Process control charts:

While the run diagram plots data on every unit, the process control chart, less precisely referred to as the quality control chart, relies on sampling. The method requires plotting statistical samples of measured process output for a quality characteristic. By watching the plotted points, the observer can detect unusual process variation, which calls for some kind of corrective action.

Mean chart and range chart (figure 6.10)

Central line for the mean and the range charts

Upper and lower control limits for the mean chart

Upper and lower control limit for the range chart

Process capability Analysis

Cp versus Cpk

QUESTIONS TO PONDERQUESTIONS TO PONDER

1. What is a transformation process? How might process performance be described in terms of quality characteristics?

2. How do special-cause variation and common cause variation relate to process control and process capability?

3. What are the roles of run diagrams and process control charts in improvement programs? What are the similarities and differences?

4. In control charting for variables why use two charts (e.g. mean and range)?

5. Inspection does not necessarily lead to quality. Discuss? 6. Quality is as good as the data is. Discuss? How do variables

data differ from attributes data?

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Topics for DiscussionTopics for Discussion

How do the five dimensions of service quality differ from those of product quality?

Why is measuring service quality so difficult?

Compare the philosophies of Deming and Crosby.

What are the limitations of “benchmarking”.

Illustrate the four components in the cost of quality for a service.

Why do service firms hesitate to offer a service guarantee?

How can recovery from a service failure be a blessing in disguise?