Service Quality Enhancement Tool

WHAT IS SERVICE QUALITY?

Service Quality is the ‘customer’s overall assessment of the level of excellence derived from a service’.

POTENTIAL OUTCOMES

By enhancing service quality, one or more of the following is likely happen:

THE TURNOVER DRIVERS

TAKING THE CUSTOMER’S PERSPECTIVE…..THE RATIONALE

However, it is often difficult to assess how well you do this:

• As business owners or managers we are more likely to overestimate the service level we provide and underestimate the customer’s expectations. That is, there will always be a gap between what the customer thinks and what we thought was delivered. This occurs for experienced operators as well as new entrants to the industry.
• Hence, it is wise to step outside our role as owner/manager at regular intervals to assess our service performance not from the insider’s view but from the customer’s perspective.
• The customer’s view can be obtained in several ways. For instance, you may collect customer comments regularly, conduct satisfaction surveys, talk regularly to key customers, use ‘mystery’ shopper surveys or use a self-assessment tool to understand your customers. The most successful businesses are more likely to use more than just one approach.

HOW DOES THE TOOL WORK?

Seeing your business ‘through the eyes of the customer’ builds on the idea that ‘your service’ is comprised of many stages of customer interaction. These are often known as ‘Moments of Truth’.

This tool involves three important steps which must be considered and addressed to improve customer service.