Quality Management In Service (TQS)

Quality Management in Service Firms: sustaining structures of total quality service (TQS)

Introduction

Quality product is as a result of service quality and therefore both are intertwined. Competitive advantage is guaranteed by the nature of the product in form of service offered by an organization. Customer satisfaction can be said to be the perception of getting the expected value from a service due to the degree of quality guaranteed by an organization. According to Emel K.

Y. [1], quality is defined as fitness for use and one of the approaches that identify the definition are value-based approaches of operation management. The objective of a firm, therefore, is to focus on satisfying the customer with improved profits as the reward. In

Quality of a service is actually a reflection of the integrated functions of the organization, whereby the operational managers are liable and not the top management. The top management should only formulate strategic policies that guide the achievement of the overall service quality objective.

Ishikawa provided the aspects of total quality management as continuous training, quality tool and quality chain. He also reported that; quality control is practiced through development, design and the production of services in the most economical way. However, the model did not relate economies of production to customer satisfaction in form of pricing. His conclusion that quality control is a collective responsibility renders quality control department obsolete. Controlling the quality of services also becomes hard for firms if they only focus on the traditional control of production, it may not be able to control the marketing process [4].

Contemporary service sector firms are being driven by environmental factors so as to conform to quality delivery. It therefore means that the organization’s management lacks its independent strategic goal of satisfying potential customers. It depicts the public sector as reluctant

It is used to measure perceptions by the extent of its disparity from customer expectations. Even though customer expectations can be verbally expressed, it is however difficult for this model to capture all the intrigues pertaining consumers’ sentiments about the service delivered. The authors admittedly reported that SERVQUAL model needs improvement in order to viably measure customer satisfaction. The difference between customer’s expectation and actual service delivered was not given the units in which it can be quantified. It then begs the question, “by how much, or how many of what quantity a firm needs to improve? It is a difficult question that can be posed to a service sector firm given that services unlike goods are intangible.

Consequently, SERVQUAL should focus on the functional aspects of a firm and not the customer-value-end. Prachi M. J. [2] also mentioned that customer expectations depend on other factors such as company’s image, external influencers and traditional marketing activities. Ankit

A. and Gulshan K. [6] supported it by saying that image is very important to service firms and