What do you mean by Service Quality?

Service Quality or Customer Service

✓ Customer service is the set of activities an organisation uses to satisfy the customers and their needs.

✓ The service can be provided at:

(i) before the sale of the product;
(ii) during the sale of the product; and
(iii) after the sale of the product.

✓ Though the terms ‘service quality’ and ‘customer service’ are used invariably, the term ‘service quality’ may be misleading sometimes. Because many authors use the term ‘service quality’ to represent the quality efforts in service sectors/industries. However, our text focuses more on customer service.

Elements of Customer Service

Jacques Horovitz and Chan Cudennec-poon have listed the 25 elements of customer service. They are listed in Table 1.1.

Table 1. 1.Elements of customer service

I. Organization

Identify each market segment.
Write down the requirements.
Communicate the requirements.
Organize processes.
Organize physical spaces.

II. Customer Care

6 . Meet the customer’s expectations.
7. Get the customer’s point of view.
8. Deliver what is promised.
9. Make the customer feel valued.
10. Respond to all complaints.
11. Over-respond to the customer.
12. Provide a clean and comfortable customer

III. Communication

13. Optimize the trade-off between time and personal attention.
14. Minimize the number of contact points.
15. Provide pleasant, knowledgeable and enthusiastic employees.
16. Write documents in customer friendly language.

IV. Front-line People

17. Hire people who like people.
18. Challenge them to develop better methods.
19. Given them the authority to solve problems.
20. Serve them as internal customers.
21. Be sure they are adequately trained.
22. Recognize and reward performance.

V. Leadership

23. Lead by example.
24. Listen to the front-line people.
25. Strive for continuous process improvement.

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