As the video suggested, service marketing involves challenges quite different from those of goods marketing. For example, determining exactly what the service customer wants, executing that service properly, and even convincing customers that they received what they requested can be difficult for even the best service firms. These difficulties stem from the characteristics that distinguish services from tangible goods:

• Intangibility. Since services cannot be touched, held, heard, or smelled, consumers cannot evaluate them in the most immediate way possible. To judge a service, the customer must experience it fully, assessing it after it has been used. Consequently, service consumers will often look for indicators of quality before trying a service, and service providers will try to make the experience of the service as memorable as possible. They will try to provide aids to memory (including tangible items) to help customers recall the quality they experienced.
   
• Perishability. Unlike tangible goods, services cannot be stored for future use, nor do they last beyond the consumer's experience of them. As a result, service providers must make sure that their supply of service goods is always in line with demand.
   
• Variability. Since service goods depend upon performance, and because delivery is always subject to human error, the quality of services is variable. If one customer service agent is having a bad day, the quality of the entire customer service product could drop a notch. Consequently, service firms must maintain strict training and performance standards to ensure the consistent quality of their services.
   
• Inseparability. Services cannot be separated from the customer's experience of them. The customer must be present, in the office, on the phone, at the Web site, to perceive the benefits of the service product. Timing, therefore, is crucial in the service industry. Service providers must always be ready to deliver top-quality service to the customer and to make sure the customer remembers that quality as long as possible. Further, time is important, because most service consumers want to make the most of their limited time. As a result, time, in the form of convenience and efficiency, is often one of the principal measures of service quality.

Gap Analysis

A number of tools have been developed to measure the elusive quality of services. One of the best-known of these is Gap Analysis. This tool is particularly useful in cases in which a firm knows the quality of its services has slipped but doesn't know where the problems are occurring.

Gap Analysis builds on the idea that delivering quality service depends on successfully executing several steps. Whenever a step fails, a gap develops that prevents the full service from reaching the customer. These possible gaps include:

• Gap 1: Customer expectations are not accurately perceived by management.
   
• Gap 2: Management perception of customer expectations are not well-translated into service specifications.
   
• Gap 3: Service specifications are not properly executed.
   
• Gap 4: Service execution (service to be expected) is not communicated to customer.
   
• Gap 5: Service executed is not perceived accurately by customer.

A perfect service is one that covers all these gaps. In other words, with such a service, management understands customer expectations, develops specifications for the service based on those expectations, employees execute the service according to the specifications, and customers accurately recognize that the service meets their expectations. If the service firm consistently covers all of these gaps, it will condition its customers to expect the service it actually delivers.

Now let's apply some of these ideas to the situation at CanGo. Click "next" to proceed.

 
 
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