Page 218 - DMGT522_SERVICES MANAGEMENT

Unit 10: Service Quality

be they banks, insurance companies, hotels, travel agencies, hospitals or any such. The Notes
management’s perception and service design standards might be accurate and perfect. But if the
interacting service provider during service delivery falls short of the standards specified, the
customer will get an impression of a poorly performing firm. This becomes especially important
for that firm that is heavily dependent on people in performing the last transaction.

Example: Public sector banks might have the best of design specifications set by Reserve
Bank of India; yet late-coming staff, corrupt employees (the Harshad Mehta scam of misuse of
Portfolio Management Funds and the internal document mess-up in State Bank of India) would
bring large gaps in quality to put it mildly.
Some of the reasons for Gap-3 to occur are:

Ineffective recruitment, role ambiguity;
Role conflict;
Lack of empowerment, control and poor teamwork;
Failure to match supply and demand (in a retail store there would be peak crowds during
the evenings and slack demand during the afternoons, but the employee strengths would
be the same), customers not cooperating or failing to live up to their roles (lack of knowledge
and responsibilities);

Channel conflicts, etc.
The service firm must ensure that systems, processes and people are in the right place. This will
make sure that service delivery is as per the design standards set.

Gap 4: Service Delivery – External Communications to Customer

This is essentially a communication gap. An over-hyped communication raises the expectations of
the customer – and his benchmark of service quality and his expectations from the service delivery
skyrocket. It will be difficult then for the firm to meet the expectation and there would inevitably
be a shortfall. The tragedy is the customers would have been satisfied without the hype. But now
they go back with memories of disappointment and are actually dissatisfied. This results from
inadequate communication from the firm.

Example: Doordarshan, the much-maligned state TV broadcaster, would announce a
certain programme, say an interview with Mr. Amitabh Bachchan, to be broadcast at 7 p.m. and
they would fail to do so at that hour - creating huge disappointment. The viewers would curse
and would not forgive DD despite an apology - even if one were forthcoming.

The causes of Gap-4 are:
Lack of cohesiveness in marketing communications;

Absence of strong internal marketing programme, not being able to meet customers’
expectations through communications;

Over-promising in advertising and personal selling;
Inadequate horizontal communication between sales and operations;

Differences in policies and procedures across branches, etc.

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