Tangibles: The Five Dimensions Of Service Quality

Service Quality Dimensions
Customers assess the quality of service using several parameters commonly known as dimensions of service quality. Berry, Parasuraman and Zeithaml (1990) came up with ten parameters: Tangibles, Reliability, Responsiveness, Competence, Courtesy, Credibility, Security, Access, Communication and Understanding. However, these ten parameters were reorganized around five notions: Tangibles, Reliability, Responsiveness, Assurance and empathy, where competence, courtesy, credibility and security are represented by assurance and the access, communication and understanding are represented by empathy. 3.5.1 Tangibles
Tangibles refer to the physical facilities used in the delivery of services. These need to be properly maintained

As such, quick favourable response to customers complaints concerning flaws in the service being delivered to them is an important aspect of quality assurance to them. This help to improve the relationship between the service provider and customers.
3.5.4 Empathy Empathy concerns the devotion of service providers to care and offer individualised attention to customers. Tom Peter (1986) said quality is not merely the manipulation of technology but rather the care of people, passion, consistence and get reactions. This implies that delivery of quality services requires total commitment by employees who are the performers. However, employees must be motivated and well trained for them to deliver services that will be appreciated by consumers.

3.5.5

This is achieved when service provider (employees) have the necessary skills to enable them execute their duties competently. Therefore it is important that employees know how to do their job and do it well if services are to succeed and satisfy customers. Though quality is multidimensional, reliability is the key dimension in determining overal perceptions of service quality (Parasuraman, Berry and Zeithaml, 1990). For a service company such as SWSC to deliver satisfactory services to its customers, it must start by hiring the right people, training them thoroughly and managing them in a way that encourages them to do what needs to be done for customers. Zemke (1990) emphasized that maximization of performance on the front line, starts with the right kind of raw material - people who are interested in the kind of work that the organisation does and who have a capacity not only for technical or professional aspects of the job, but for meeting customer expectations too. Service organisations need to focus on internal customers because that helps to motivate staff to shed old ways of doing things, take new risks and invest more time and energy in serving the customers. Employees should be capacity belt and empowered with skills and technical expertise to solve customer’ problems. They should be encouraged to work in the customer’ best interest, providing support for