ECJ EUROPEAN Cleaning Journal

ECJ’s Dutch reporter Nico Lemmens continues his look at the theme of service and expectations.

We continue our exploration of Christian Grönroos’s work on service management and marketing. We have discussed the distinction between technical (the what) and functional (the how) quality.

Good technical quality alone does not mean customers perceive the service quality is good. If customers are to consider total service quality good, functional quality has to be good as well.
Where a number of firms are competing with similar outcomes or technical quality, it is the functional quality impact of the service process that counts, especially in the case of commodity services.

Grönroos points out that quality is to a large extent perceived subjectively. The quality perception process is more complicated than the distinction between technical and functional quality would suggest. Good perceived quality is obtained when the experience quality meets the expectations of the customer: the expected quality. If expectations are unrealistic, the total perceived quality would be low, even if the experienced quality, measured in an objective way, were good.

The expected quality is a function of a number of factors, namely marketing communication, word of mouth, company image, price, customer needs and values. Some of these factors are under control of the firm, others can at best be influenced indirectly. Marketing communication is directly under control of the firm. The image and word-of-mouth factors, as well as public relations, are only indirectly controlled by the firm.

External impact on these factors may also occur, but they are basically a function of the previous performance of the firm, supported by, for example, advertising. Finally, the needs of the customer as well as the values that determine the choice of customers also have an impact on his expectations.

Grönroos’s conclusion is the level of total perceived quality is not determined simply by the level of technical and functional quality dimensions, but rather by the gap between the expected and experienced quality. Consequently, every quality programme should involve not only those involved in operation, but those responsible for external marketing and marketing communication as well. If a service provider over-promises, it raises customer’s expectations too high and, consequently, customers will perceive that they get low quality.

The level of quality may very well still be high, objectively measured, but as customer expectations were not in line with his experiences, the perceived quality is nevertheless low. Many quality development processes are destroyed by too much promise of improved service, too early. The marketer has to be very careful when designing external campaigns and activities, so he avoids making promises that cannot be kept.