In business, quality means delivering to the stakeholders whatever they want, expect or need. However, in any organisation there are always lots of different stakeholders (e.g. investors, customers, staff, suppliers, etc) and they all have different expectations. It’s a difficult balance to get right, but an organisation that is able to satisfy all its stakeholders will be successful and sustainable.
For example, in a private company, which needs to make profits, knowing the customer is very important, as this means it can offer products and services which people will want to buy. Another important factor is to provide excellent customers services, before, during and after the sale. By doing this, the satisfied customers will return to the company in the future and purchase more products and services. These customers will also recommend the company to friends, colleagues and family so the company will get a good reputation. That’s why market research can help, as it tells the company about their customers’ wants and expectations.
An important model which helps a company to analyse what it offers customers is called SERVQUAL. It was developed by Parasuraman, Zeithaml and Berry through a series of research projects and publications. The model provides a framework for measuring and managing service quality.
At first, the research team came up with ten components of service quality which could be
analysed
. But in 1988 they consolidated these into five dimension, known as RATER:
• Reliability (R)
• Assurance (A)
• Tangibles (T)
• Empathy (E)
• Responsiveness (R)
• Assurance (A)
• Tangibles (T)
• Empathy (E)
• Responsiveness (R)
A company can focus on each of these areas and
measure
each one. It can therefore identify the areas that are working well and see which need most improvement. Most successful companies regularly measure these factors to ensure that they are constantly providing a high level of service quality.
The first dimension is R for reliability. This means whether the company always provides the same level of service to all its customers all of the time. A reliable company will be
well-known
for consistently delivering what the customers expect. Today this is very important – if you ever look at the reviews on online sites, you probably know the affect one or two negative reviews can have, even if there are lots of positive comments.
The second dimension is A is for assurance. This is how much confidence customers have that the employees in the company understand the products and services the company offer. Customers expect the staff to have the
required
skills and knowledge to perform their tasks well. If you wanted to buy a new car, for example, and the salesperson couldn’t answer your questions, you would feel unsure about buying a car – even if the products were all excellent.
The next dimension is T for
tangibles
. This can be the physical properties of the product, but it also includes the physical appearance of the service provider, such as the office buildings, the staff or the equipment used to provide the service. Today this also relates to the design and functionality of the company website and online services it offers. A call centre, for example, needs to be available 24 hours a day nowadays because a global business operates in many time zones.
The fourth dimension is E is for
empathy
and this can involve many things. Firstly, this involves
effective
communications between staff and customers including polite, friendly contact and useful information that will help the customer. This is especially important when there is a problem. If the customer services staff understand how it has affected the customer and solve the issue quickly and apologise on behalf of the company, the customer will feel confident that there are good processes in place for when something does go wrong.
The final dimension is R for responsiveness. This means if employees provide the service when it is needed. It may involve, for example, phoning or emailing the customer back quickly if there is a query and providing a timely and efficient service like setting up visits by service personnel.
This is a useful basic model, but it relies on comparing customer expectations with the products and services offered. Researchers in more recent years have started to investigate if there may be other ways of evaluating service quality. They have started to examine other factors, such as customer satisfaction, purchasing intentions, market share and customer retention.
What is clear is that the most successful organisations today are focused on meeting the needs of all the stakeholders and are very concerned with offering high-quality products and services to their customers. To do this they will use a range of models, such as SERVQUAL, to make sure they are constantly
improving
. 
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