Excellent customer service is a top priority for most companies, and if it isn’t, it should be. But how do you measure and evaluate service quality? How can you narrow the gap between what you think of your business and what customers truly think about your business? This is explained by the service quality guide.
—
What is the Service Quality Model?
Simply put, the service quality model is designed to identify the gap in perception between what the company believes it is offering to customers and the customer’s perception.
Business leaders often forget that they already know everything about the company. They know the ins and outs of what they can offer the customer.
The problem here lies in the word “can.” Just because you can offer something doesn’t mean you do. Just because your product will solve the customer’s needs doesn’t mean they know that. And even if they know that, they might not like something else about the service you provide. It all comes down to quality and measuring your service quality in various fields.
There are five dimensions in the service quality model, and by understanding these dimensions, you can begin to tweak your business to better meet your customers’ needs. We will delve into these dimensions in the next section.
The service quality model was originally designed by market researchers to increase customer satisfaction in the retail and service industries. Regardless of the industry you operate in, you have some form of customer service. When dealing with customers, you need to understand how their minds work. You need to understand what drives their decisions and actions. It all comes back to perception.
You may also see the service quality model referred to as the RATER model. RATER is an acronym for the five dimensions we delve into in the next section. You can use either name to refer to this model, but service quality is the most well-known and popular name for it.
—
The Five Dimensions of Service Quality
There are five indicators that customers use to evaluate the quality of the service they receive.
- Reliability
The first dimension of service quality is reliability. This refers to an organization’s ability to perform the service accurately. It also includes the company’s ability to complete the service on time and consistently without errors every time.
- Responsiveness
The second dimension of service quality looks at the organization’s ability to respond to the customer’s needs promptly.
When companies fail to respond to the customer, especially when there is no clear reason or explanation, it creates a negative perception in the customer’s mind.
- Assurance
This dimension depends on the employee’s ability to build trust with the customer. It relies on the employee’s knowledge and ability to establish friendly and courteous connections.
This dimension is characterized by four components: competence, customer respect, effective communication, and attitude.
- Empathy
The fourth dimension of service quality is empathy. This is established by the employee’s ability to show genuine interest in customers.
Empathy must be consistently demonstrated by the employee to be effective. To determine whether someone is showing the right amount of empathy, you can ask the following questions:
– Are they friendly?
– Do they seem sensitive to the customer’s needs, interests, and life circumstances?
– Do they actively listen to the customer?
– Do they try to understand the customer’s needs by asking the right questions?
- Tangibles
The fifth and final dimension is tangibles. These can be things like the company’s aesthetics (appearance and feel of the website, logo, etc.). Are the company’s aesthetics visually appealing to the customer? Tangibles can also refer to other aesthetic areas such as:
– Employee appearance
How well are your employees presented? This doesn’t mean you need to hire supermodels or extremely attractive employees. Different companies will have different rules for this depending on the company culture and the type of customers they wish to attract.
Service Quality
Five Additional Dimensions
We said there are 5 dimensions, but some models use 10 dimensions.
The model has evolved over time, and some companies find it useful to add more dimensions to their customer satisfaction research. These additional dimensions are: access, courtesy, communication, credibility, security, and customer knowledge.
Many of these categories can already fit into the previous five dimensions, but it may be helpful to create more distinct categories to ensure your questions address all areas of quality.
How Do You Determine How Well You Perform in Each Area?
The service quality model is inherently qualitative, so the results are subjective to the companies interpreting them.
This is why many companies develop their own surveys to determine how effective they are in each of these dimensions.
Companies use this model to drive work to their own business. They don’t conduct a research study on the service level. This is why many companies create more detailed surveys that specifically address the key attributes of their business or services.
For an example of some questions you might ask, consider the following:
You run a company that offers products or services, you can include the following questions on a scale of -2 (negative) to +2 (positive). In this scenario, the number 0 will be neutral.
After purchasing the product or service, you feel that the quality of the service or product is:
– 2: Much less than expected.
– 1: Less than expected.
– 0: Exactly as expected.
+1: More than expected.
+2: Much more than expected.