Managing Quality

Chapter 11. Managing Service Quality

B. R. Lewis

Introduction

Managing service quality is concerned with understanding what is meant by service quality, what its determinants are and how they may be measured, and identifying the potential shortfalls in service quality and how they can be recovered. Responsibility for quality service lies with operations, marketing, human resources and other management – working together within an organization.

Service quality issues have been of academic and practitioner interest, and to marketers in particular, for more than two decades. This results from the increasing importance of the services sector in both developed and developing economies – to embrace both public and private, profit and not-for-profit organizations. This includes industries such as financial services, health care, tourism, professional services, government, transport and communications – where the focus of business activity is on 'services' rather than 'products'.

Services are characterized as being different from products along a number of dimensions that have implications for the quality of service provided to customers.

• They are typically intangible: there is usually little or no tangible evidence to show once a service (e.g. investment advice, consultation with a doctor) has been performed.

• Secondly, the production and consumption of many services are simultaneous; the service may not be separable from the person of the seller, and the customer may be involved in the service ...