Page 222 - DMGT522_SERVICES MANAGEMENT

Unit 10: Service Quality

Notes
Example: An insurance company might profess to be very modern, high-tech and big,
and boast of versatile products. But if the quality of transaction with the customer is not pleasant,
the customer will have a negative perception, which actually is the measurement of the quality
of insurance service by the company.

Caselet Case: Moments of Truth in Hospitality – Do they spell

Quality?

n the Hospitality industry, there are a minimum of twenty or thirty moments of truth in
Iits provision of service. A moment of truth is when an interaction occurs between a
customer and the service provider that can leave a lasting positive or negative impression
on a customer.

Moments of truth in a hotel, for example, will undoubtedly include (but not be limited to)
booking the room, check-in, check-out, dinner reservations, dinner ordering, dinner
presentation, eating (quality and quantity of food) and laundry receipt.

Understanding the moments of truth that are important to an organisation’s customers –
by segment – is the key to understanding what is good customer service.
Completing customer satisfaction surveys is not a reliable way of determining moments
of truth for two reasons.
Firstly, the design of most satisfaction surveys is usually poor. They ask a series of questions
which request an opinion on how well the service provider performed. The opinion is
prompted by a question similar to, “The booking was handled with efficiency and attention
to my needs” and the answers range from totally disagree to totally agree on a five point
scale.
Surveys designed this way give a misleading view, as they do not ask a question which
seeks to understand the importance of the particular services prior to the request for an
opinion.
A request for a response to a statement such as, “The booking process was very important
to my level of enjoyment during my stay”, prior to, “How well did we perform?” will at
least make it clear whether the service we provided really mattered or not, independent of
whether we provided the service well, or not. In most cases, only three or four of the
“services” provided in a list of ten questions will actually be important.
The second reason why customer satisfaction surveys are unreliable is that even if they are
designed well, satisfaction surveys tend to condition the recipients to give a response.
In a study reported in the Harvard Business Review in 1995, Jones and Sasser noted that
customer retention levels of around forty percent correlated to an average rating of
“satisfied” and did not reach 80% until the average rating reached “very satisfied”.
Mercer reported in a separate study that eighty percent of customers who churned from an
internet service provider had responded that they were “satisfied” or “very satisfied”
with their service.

However, relying on customer satisfaction surveys to determine the quality of customer
service is and how well an organisation has performed is risk.

Source: www.changefactory.com.au

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