Service Quality Definition

Service quality is the comparison of perceived expectations with perceived performance of service, perceived expectations is given by E , perceived performance is given by P and service quality is SQ which gives an equation SQ = P – E . The business which gives services of high quality will meet or exceed customers expectations which make the business economically competitive, customers form the service expectations from past experience, word of mouth and marketing communications. Service quality can be related to service potential , service process and service result. Individual service quality states the service quality of employees as distinct from that the customers perceived.

Services are commodities that cannot be stored or disappear

These characteristics enhance the importance of certain marketing strategies that are unique to services marketing, such as service customization, managing evidence, making the service tangible, and synchronizing supply and demand patterns. Quality is an extremely difficult concept to be defined in few words. Quality has been defined as conforming to requirements .This implies that organizations must establish requirements and specifications; once the requirements and specifications established, the quality goal of the various function of an organization is to comply strictly with these

A development of this idea by Gronroos identified ‘technical’ and ‘functional’ quality as being the two principle components of quality. Technical quality refers to the quantifiable aspects of a service , in which consumers receive in their interactions with the firm providing service, it can be measured by both customer and supplier, it forms basis for judging service quality. Examples of technical quality include the waiting time in an automobile service work shop and the reliability of their services. However, this is not the only factor that makes the perceived service quality, Because services involve direct consumer-producer interaction, consumers are also influenced by how the technical quality is delivered to them. This is what Gronroos describes as functional quality and cannot be measured as objectively as the elements of technical quality. In the case of the queue in a automobile service work shop, functional quality is influenced by the environment in which queuing takes place and consumers perceptions of the manner in which queues are handled by the staff, in contrast to goods where technical aspects of quality predominate. Many conceptualizations of service quality therefore begin by addressing the abstract expectations that consumers hold in respect of quality. Consumers subsequently judge