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Article Excerpt
Service quality has become essential for the survival of service companies in the emerging world without borders. Effective delivery of quality services involves finding customers, identifying their needs, and meeting or exceeding their expectations. This article discusses challenges to delivering quality. It proposes that employees are the key to delivering excellent quality services and suggests ways to create a talented and motivated workforce. HR strategies like attracting the right people, developing people, providing relevant support systems, and retaining the best people are discussed comprehensively as a means of creating a talented workforce. Finally, the article presents the major steps needed to implement a quality service program in order to gain a strategic competitive advantage.
In the last two decades, tumultuous changes have occurred in the business environment, with quality consistently considered one of management's most competitive priorities and a prerequisite for sustenance and growth (Sureshchandar, et al., 2002). Quality is a competitive opportunity, not just a problem to be solved. Therefore, managers need to stop thinking about quality merely in relation to production process control and start thinking about it rigorously in relation to consumers' needs and preferences (Garvin, 1987). Wright and Snell (2002) found that customer-focused organizational culture, with aligned HR strategies and practices, is the key to successful strategy implementation. But firms face numerous workforce challenges in delivering services to their customers' satisfaction. What roles do employees play in delivering service quality? How does a firm create a talented workforce to deliver quality services? How does a firm implement a quality service program? This article addresses these questions by exploring current knowledge.
Challenges of Delivering Quality Service
The quality improvement movement that swept the manufacturing sector worldwide in the last few years is beginning to take shape in the service sector (Bitner, et al., 1994). The origin and development of the philosophies about quality and continuous improvement techniques were strongly directed at manufacturing companies (Henkel, et al., 1997); however, the model of traditional mass-production manufacturing is not suitable for the service sector. Services are intangible compared to physical goods (Levitt, 1981). Products are tangible objects that exist in both time and space, while services are social acts or interactions and exist in time only (Berry, 1980).
The inseparability of production and consumption stems from the concurrent creation and consumption that delineate the majority of services (Zeithaml, et al., 1985). Services cannot be inventoried--they are usually sold first, then produced and consumed simultaneously. On the other hand, physical goods are produced first, then inventoried, sold, and consumed. Hence, service organizations frequently have trouble matching supply and demand. Further, clients greatly influence the outcome of the transformation process of service delivery. The characteristics of a service (e.g., medical examination, car rental, and restaurant service) can vary from producer to producer, from customer to customer, and from day to day. Ineffective attention to these characteristics can degrade the quality of services a company provides, which in turn negatively affects customer satisfaction, employee turnover, sales, and productivity (Schlesinger & Heskett, 1991).
To deliver quality services effectively, companies need to be concerned with finding customers, identifying their needs, and meeting, or exceeding, their expectations. Successful companies, such as Sears, Eastman Kodak, AT&T, and American Express, implement win-win agreements and relationships, treat customers, employees, suppliers, and other stakeholders as partners, and are more concerned with doing the right things than doing things right (Secretan, 1996). Quality service delivers excellent and unique service to customers. Such focus on meeting and satisfying customers' needs is truly motivated by enlightened self-interest and altruism. Companies concentrating on delivering service quality honor meeting the needs of customers over mere short-term profit making. They consider a long-term perspective in which profits flow from delivery of quality services.
Addressing customer expectations and perceptions is central to the delivery of excellent service. Consumers' perceptions of service quality are influenced by five distinct gaps in organizations (Zeithaml, et al., 1988). These gaps describe differences in:
1. Consumer expectations and management perceptions of consumer expectations;
2. Management perceptions of consumer expectations and service quality specifications;
3. Service quality specifications and the service actually delivered;
4. Service delivery and what is communicated about the service to consumers;
5. Consumer expectations and perceptions of delivered services.
The fifth gap depends on the size and direction of the first four gaps. Luk and Layton (2002) suggested two additional gaps related to differences between understanding and perception of frontline service providers compared to those of management.
Organizations' strategy should be to narrow the gaps (Gummesson, 1991). Employees are critical to organizations' success in delivering service, as services are delivered by people (employees) to people (customers). The human resource function has a critical role to play in satisfying the expectations of shareholders, employees, and customers (Kaplan & Norton, 1996). HR practices contribute to improved economic performance (Macduffie, 1995; Huselid, 1995; Becker & Huselid, 1998; Pfeffer, 1998) by building organizational capabilities, improving employee satisfaction, and shaping customer satisfaction (Yeung & Berman, 1997; Ulrich, 1997). The HR function should be assessed on its deliverables, using simple outcome measures such as the improvement of the workforce mindset, its competencies, and critical behaviors (Beatty, et al., 2003). Business success requires unyielding vigilance in six management practices (all four primary practices, i.e., strategy, execution, culture, and structure, and any two of the four secondary practices, i.e., talent, innovation, leadership, and mergers and partnerships) and constant renewal to excel (Nohria, et al., 2003).
Excellence in service delivery is heavily dependent on the way a workforce is managed, and the workforce directly influences the following five dimensions of service quality (Zeithaml & Bitner, 2000):
1. Reliability: Ability to deliver services as promised;
2. Responsiveness: Willingness to provide prompt service and help customers;
3. Assurance: Ability to communicate credibility and to convey trust and confidence;
4. Empathy: Willingness to provide caring and individualized attention to customers;
5. Tangibles: Maintaining the appearance of physical facilities and personnel.
Other factors like role ambiguity (vague expectations and norms, and lack of information about a task) and role conflict (incompatible expectations regarding a task) can affect the delivery of service quality (Zeithaml, et al., 1988).
A Talented Workforce and Service Quality Delivery
Companies that consider people their most valuable asset will survive and thrive in the 21st century (Senge, 1998). Employees deliver service to customers. Thus, companies must put employees first because only satisfied employees can most effectively serve customers (Rosenbluth, 1991 ; Secretan, 1996).
Schneider and Bowen (1985) suggest that organizational practices (both service related and human resources-related) are the source of cues used by customers to evaluate service quality. Unless service employees are happy, customer satisfaction will be difficult to achieve (Rosenbluth, 1991). Employees who believe their company values them highly will treat customers with great respect.
Today, attracting and retaining customers requires a fundamentally different approach from the one...
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