Quality Of Service Delivery
A comparison of expectations and performance is used to determine service quality. Factors such as personal needs and previous experiences influence a customer's expectations of a particular service. Expected and perceived service levels may not always be equal, resulting in a gap.
There are five gaps that could result in poor service quality for customers.
1. GAP ONE: between consumer expectations and management perceptions.
• This chasm occurs when management fails to recognise what the customers want. For example, while hospital administrators may believe that patients want better food, patients may be more concerned with the nurse's responsiveness.
• This gap may be for following reasons:
a. A lack of marketing research
b. Information about the audience's expectations was misinterpreted.
c. There isn't a lot of research on demand quality.
d. There are too many layers between front-line workers and upper-level management.
2. GAP TWO: BETWEEN MANAGEMENT PERCEPTION AND SERVICE QUALITY SPECIFICATION
• Even if management understands what the customer wants, they may fail to set an appropriate performance standard. A good example is when hospital administrators tell nurses to respond to a request 'quickly,' but don't specify how quickly.
• Gap may have following reasons:
a. Inadequate planning processes
b. A lack of commitment from management
c. Service design that is unclear or ambiguous
d. A non-systematic approach to developing new services
3. GAP THREE: BETWEEN SERVICE QUALITY SPECIFICATION AND SERVICE DELIVERY
• Service personnel may be undertrained, incapable, or unwilling to meet the set service standard, resulting in a gap.
• Gap may have following reasons:
a. Human resource policies that are ineffective, such as ineffective recruitment, role ambiguity, role conflict, and an ineffective evaluation and compensation system
b. Internal marketing that is ineffective
c. Inability to match supply and demand
d. Inadequate customer training and education
4. GAP FOUR: BETWEEN SERVICE DELIVERY AND EXTERNAL COMMUNICATION
• Management statements and advertisements have a significant impact on consumer expectations. When these assumed expectations are not met when the service is delivered, there is a gap.
• For example, the hospital depicted in the brochure may appear to have clean and furnished rooms, but it may be poorly maintained in reality, failing to meet the patients' expectations.
• Gap may have following reasons:
a. Over-promising in a public relations campaign
b. Mismanagement of customer expectations
c. Failure to perform in accordance with the specifications
5. GAP FIVE: BETWEEN EXPECTED SERVICE AND EXPERIENCED SERVICE
• This chasm occurs when customers misinterpret service quality. A physician, for example, may continue to visit the patient to demonstrate and ensure care, but the patient may interpret this as a sign that something is seriously wrong.
DETERMINANTS THAT MAY INFLUENCE THE APPEARANCE OF A GAP ARE
1. Reliability: the ability to deliver on a promise consistently and accurately.
2. Assurance: the ability of employees to convey trust and confidence through their knowledge and courtesy.
3. Empathy: providing customers with compassionate, one-on-one service.
4. Responsiveness: a desire to assist customers and provide prompt service.
THE SEVOTTAM MODEL OF SERVICE DELIVERY
• The Sevottam model was created with the overarching goal of improving the country's quality of public service delivery. There are three components to the model, and in addition to the overarching goal, intermediate outcomes are expected from compliance with conditions designed for each of these three components.
• The model's first component necessitates effective charter implementation, which creates a channel for citizens' input into how organisations determine service delivery requirements.
• Citizens' Charters make information on citizens' entitlements available to the public, making citizens more informed and thus empowering them to demand better services.
• The model's second component, 'Public Grievance Redress,' necessitates a good grievance redress system that, regardless of the final decision, leaves citizens more satisfied with how the organisation responds to complaints/ grievances.
• The third component, 'Excellence in Service Delivery,' asserts that an organisation can achieve excellent service delivery performance only if it effectively manages the key ingredients for good service delivery and builds its own capacity to improve delivery over time.
• How closely improvement actions are linked to assessment results will determine how effective such an assessment model is at influencing service delivery quality. Furthermore, any assessment model must be updated on a regular basis to keep up with new developments.
• Change management and research and development, in addition to the administration of the assessment process and its culmination in certification or awards, have been identified as important focus areas for running this model.
MAIN OBJECTIVE:
1. Improve the country's public service delivery quality.
2. Intermediate results: Compliance with the conditions designed for each of these three components is expected to produce intermediate results. Citizen Empowerment, Redress Satisfaction, and Capacity Enhancement are among them.
3. Defects in previous public-service delivery systems:
Drawbacks of Citizens Charter
1. Citizens, clients, and stakeholders were excluded from the planning process.
2. There is no link between improved service delivery and this.
3. Information about the charter does not circulate throughout the organisation, so it is not implemented.
Drawbacks in earlier Public Grievance Redress Mechanism
1. Many organisations do not have this in place.
2. Complaints are not treated as feedback for service improvement.
3. Employees who have not been trained to improve their assigned tasks.
Defects in earlier Public Delivery Standards
A. Unprescribed or unmet due to a lack of infrastructure.
B. Employees at the cutting edge are disengaged, demotivated, and lacking in training.
C. Inadequate planning for optimal resource utilisation.