Question

Service quality differs from product quality in that the consumer is actively involved in the service creation process. Service firms therefore face a unique situation whereby each service encounter with a customer is a test of the firms quality standards.

in light of the above information discuss how firms can manage service quality to ensure consistent service delivery that meets or exceeds customer expectations.

Answer 1

Customers are the foundation of every business and should always be given high priority by the business men. Now-a-days, customers do not buy just products or services, they buy more than that. They give importance to quality, market trends, look and features of the product, and the most important thing is how beneficial is the product for them. So to drag the attention of the customers, firms need to manage service quality in order to meet the customers' expectations.

Let's discuss how firms can be able to manage their service quality:

1) Strengthening of Support Team: In order to maintain service quality, a firm needs to build a strong team who can provide good service to customers. To achieve this, firm needs to hire candidates with right skills and train them to improve their skills. There are different types of customers, some are more aggressive, some ask many questions; so a customer support team should have patience to listen them and handle professionally. Another point to build a strong support team is to hire people who have good communication skills and must know how to make customers happy and satisfied. Also the firm must ensure that its support team should have complete knowledge of its product or service, features and pricing plans. They should not tell a lie or mislead the customers by providing wrong information.
A firm can deliver good service only when its support staffs are on the right track.

2) Maintaining quality of the Service at any cost: A firm should always try to maintain its service quality inspite of its low price. While providing service, if the company charges a relatively low price to acquire more number of customers, then it should not compromise with quality of service. It can try to lower its costs but can't compromise with quality. A customer gives more importance to quality than price. So try to manage quality of the service at any cost and ask customers for feedback to improve your service periodically. A customer can better represent how your service is? So allow customers to provide genuine opinion on your service and consider it seriously. This can bring improvements in the service of the firm and encourage them to maintain it to satisfy the customers.