SERVICES

MARKETING
CHAPTER - 7
Service Quality GAPS Model
INTRODUCTION :
 Effective services marketing is a complex process
that involves many different strategies, skills, and
tasks.
 One of the greatest challenges of service firms is
to ensure continuous quality services to the
customers.

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Service marketers have long been confused
about how to approach this complicated
topic in an organised manner.

The design of effective quality management

process alone can’t ensure the achievement
of the desired objective.

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One approach is that of viewing the services
marketing in a structured and integrated way as a
model called “The GAPS Model of Service
Quality” as devised by Parasuraman, Zeithaml,
and Berry in 1988.
A Model can be defined as a simplified
representation of reality. It simplifies by
incorporating only those aspects of reality that
are of interest to the modelling.

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THE CUSTOMER GAP
 The GAPS model positions the key concepts,
strategies, and decision in service marketing in
correct perspective.
 The most important is the Customer Gap, which
is the difference between Customer Expectations
and Customer Perceptions.

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THE CUSTOMER GAP
Customer Expected Service

THE CUSTOMER GAP

Customer Perceived Service

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1. Customer expectations are standards or
reference points that customers bring into the
service experience.
2. Customer perceptions are subjective
assessments of actual service experience.
3. Closing the gap between what customers
expect and what they perceive is critical to
delivering quality service – It forms the basis
or the starting point for the GAPS Model

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4. Because Customer satisfaction and customer
focus are so critical to competitiveness of the
firms, any company interested in delivering
quality service must begin with a clear
understanding of its customers.

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5. The sources of Customer expectations are :
1. Marketer-controlled factors (such as pricing,
advertising, sale promises) as well as
2. Factors that the marketers has limited ability
to effect (innate, personal needs, word-of-
mouth communications, competitive
offerings).

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6. In ideal situations, expectations and
perceptions would be identical – customers
would perceive that they have received what
they thought they would and should. In
practice this concepts are often, even
usually, separated by some distance.
Broadly, it is the goal of services marketing
to bridge this distance.

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7. This Customer gap leads to the following
situations :
1. Lost customers,
2. Bad reputation,
3. Negatively confirmed quality,
4. Negative corporate or local image.
8. Service firms need to turn this negativity to
positive results in the process of bridging the
gap by making perceived quality greater than
the expected quality.

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9. Some marketing experts put this as GAP
No. 1, and some others as No. 5. But it is
best to refer it as “The Customer Gap”.

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THE GAPS TABLE OR MATRIX
 The following table gives a tabular form or the
matrix form of the GAPS and their explanations :

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Gap Description Gap Between
The Customer Customer Expected Service Customer Perceived Service
GAP
The Provider Customer Expectations Company Perception of
GAP - 1 Customer Expectations
The Provider Customer Driven Service Designs Management Perception of
GAP – 2 and Standards Customer Expectations
The Provider Customer Driven Service Designs Service Delivery
GAP – 3 and Standards
The Provider External Communications to the Service Delivery
GAP - 4 Customers

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Customer Gap Customer Perception
Customer Expectation Provider GAP – 1
Gap between Customer
Expectation and Perception Not knowing what
customers expect
Provider GAP – 2 Company / Management
Perception of Customer
Not selecting the right
Expectations
service designs and
Customer Driven Service Provider GAP – 3
standards
Designs and Standards
Not delivering to
Provider GAP – 4 Service Delivery
service designs and
Not matching performance standards
to promises External Communications to
the Customers

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THE PROVIDER GAPS
 To close the all important Customer Gap, the
GAPS model suggests that four other gaps –
known as the Provider Gaps need to be closed.
 These gaps occur within the organisation
providing the service (hence the term “Provider
Gaps”). These include :

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THE PROVIDER GAPS (CONTD.)
GAP-1 : Not knowing what customers expect

GAP-2 : Not selecting the right service designs and

standards

GAP-3 : Not delivering to service designs and

standards

GAP-4 : Not matching performance to promises

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THE PROVIDER GAP - 1
Customer Expectations

THE PROVIDER GAP - 1

Company Perception of Customer Expectations

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PROVIDER GAP -1 :
NOT KNOWING WHAT CUSTOMERS
EXPECT
 Provider Gap -1 is the difference between customer
expectations of service and firm’s understanding of
those expectations.
 An important cause in many firms for not meeting
customers’ is that the firm lacks accurate
understanding of exactly what those expectations are.
 There are many reasons for managers not being
aware of what customers expect :

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1. They may not interact directly with the customers,
2. They may be unwilling to ask about expectations, or
3. They may be unprepared to address them.

When people with authority and responsibility for

setting priorities don’t fully understand customer
service expectations, they may trigger a chain
reaction of bad decisions and sub-optimal resource
allocations that results in perceptions of poor
service quality.

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THE KEY FACTORS LEADING TO THE
PROVIDER GAP-1 ARE :
 Inadequate marketing research operation :
 Insufficient marketing research
 Research not focused on service quality
 Inadequate use of market research
 Lack of upward communications :
 Lack of interaction between management and customers
 Insufficient communication between contact employees
and managers
 Too many layers between contact personnel and top
management
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•Insufficient relationship focus :
• Lack of market segmentation
• Focus on transaction rather than relationship
• Focus on new customers rather than relationship
customers

•Inadequate service recovery :

• Lack of encouragement to listen to customer
complaints
• Failure to make amends when things go wrong
• No appropriate recovery mechanism in place to tackle
service failures

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THE PROVIDER GAP - 2
Customer Driven Service Designs and Standards

THE PROVIDER GAP - 2

Management Perception of Customer Expectations

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PROVIDER GAP -2 :
NOT SELECTING THE RIGHT SERVICE
DESIGNS AND STANDARDS
 For delivering quality service, accurate perceptions of
customers’ expectation are necessary, but not sufficient.
 Another pre-requisite is the presence of service designs
and performance standards that reflect those accurate
perceptions.
 Frequently the service firms experience difficulty in
translating customer expectations into service quality
specifications that employees can understand and
execute.
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•These are precisely the Provider Gap -2, which is the
difference between the company’s understanding of
customers’ expectation and development of customer
driven service designs and standards.

•Customer driven standards are different from the

conventional performance standards that companies
establish for service in that they are based on pivotal
customer requirements that are visible to and measured
by customers.

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These are operation standards set to correspond to
customer expectation and priorities rather than to
company’s concern such as productivity or
efficiency.

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THE KEY FACTORS LEADING TO THE
PROVIDER GAP-2 ARE :
 Poor service design :
 Unsystematic new service development process
 Vague, undefined service designs
 Failure to connect service design to service positioning

 Absence of customer driven standards :

 Lack of customer driven service standards
 Absence of process management to focus customer
requirements
 Absence of formal process for setting service quality goals
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 Inappropriate physical evidence and servicescape
:
 Failure to develop tangibles in line with customer
expectations
 Servicescape design that doesn’t meet customers’ and
employees’ needs
 Inadequate maintenance and updating of the
servicescape

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THE PROVIDER GAP - 3
Customer Driven Service Designs and Standards

THE PROVIDER GAP - 3

Service Delivery

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PROVIDER GAP -3 :
NOT DELIVERING TO SERVICE DESIGNS
AND STANDARDS
 Once service designs and standards are in place it
would seem that the firm is well on its way to
delivering high quality service. This assumption
is true, but it still not enough to deliver excellent
service. The firm must have systems, processes,
and people in place to ensure that service delivery
actually matches (or is even better that) the
designs and standards in place.

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•Provider Gap -3 is the discrepancy between development
of customer driven service standards and actual service
performance by company employees.
•Even when guidelines exist for performing services well
and treating customers correctly, high quality service
performance is not a certainty.
•Standards must be backed by appropriate resources
(people, systems, and technology) and also must be
enforced to be effective, i.e., employees must be measured
and compensated on the basis of performances along those
standards.

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• Thus even when standards accurately reflect customers’
expectations, if the company fails to provide support for
those standards.
• If the company doesn’t facilitate, encourage, and require
their achievement, standards alone don’t produce good
results.
• When the level of service delivery falls short of the
standards, it falls short of what customers expect as well.
• Narrowing Gap-3 – by ensuring that all the resources
needed to achieve that standards in place – reduces the
customer gap.

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THE KEY FACTORS LEADING TO THE
PROVIDER GAP-3 ARE :
 Deficiencies in human resources policies :
 Ineffective recruitment
 Role ambiguity and role conflict
 Poor employee-technology-job fit
 In appropriate evaluation and compensation systems
 Lack of empowerment, perceived control and teamwork
 Customers who don’t fulfil roles :
 Customers who lack knowledge of their roles and
responsibilities
 Customers who negatively impact each other
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 Problems with service intermediaries :
 Channel conflict over objectives and performances
 Difficulty controlling quality and consistency
 Tension between empowerment and control
 Failure to match supply and demand :
 Failures to smooth peaks and valleys of demand
 Inappropriate customer mix (Marketing Mix)
 Over reliance on price to smooth demand

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THE PROVIDER GAP - 4
External Communications to the Customers

THE PROVIDER GAP - 4

Service Delivery

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PROVIDER GAP -4 :
NOT MATCHING PERFORMANCE TO
PROMISES
 Provider Gap -4 depicts the difference between the
service delivery and the service providers’ external
communications.
 Promises made by a service firm thro’ its media
advertising, sales force, and other communications may
potentially raise customer expectations, the standards
against which customers assess service quality.
 The discrepancy between actual and promised service
therefore has an adverse effect on the customer gap.

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BROKEN PROMISES CAN OCCUR FOR
MANY REASONS :
 Over promising in advertising or personal selling,
 Inadequate coordination between operations and marketing,

and
 Differences in policies and procedures across service outlets.

In addition to unduly elevating expectations thro’ exaggerated

claims, there are other, less obvious ways in which external
communications influence customers’ service quality
assessment. Service firms frequently fail to capitalise on
opportunities to educate customers to use services
appropriately. They also neglect to manage customer
expectations of what will be delivered in service transactions
and relationships.
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THE KEY FACTORS LEADING TO THE
PROVIDER GAP-4 ARE :
 Lack of integrated service marketing
communications :
 Tendency to view each external communication as
independent
 Absence of interactive marketing in communications
plan
 Absence of strong internal marketing programme
 Ineffective management of customer expectations :
 Absence of customer expectation management thro’ all
forms of communications
 Lack of adequate educations for customers
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 Over promising :
 Over promising in advertising
 Over promising in personal selling
 Over promising thro’ physical evidence cue
 Adequate horizontal communications :
 Insufficient communication between sales and operations
 Insufficient communication between advertising and
operations
 Difference in policies and procedures across branches or
units

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PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER :
CLOSING THE GAPS
 The key to closing the customer gap is to close
the provider gaps-1 thro’ 4 and keep them closed.
To the extent that one or more of provider gaps-1
thro’ 4 exist, customers perceived service quality
falls short of their expectation.

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The GAPS Model of service quality serves as a
framework for service firms attempting to improve
quality service, and delivering and marketing
service.

The GAPS Model positions the key concepts,

strategies, and decisions in services marketing in a
manner that begins with the customer and builds
the organisation’s tasks around what is needed to
close the gap between customer expectations and
perceptions.

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 END OF CHAPTER – 7

© Himansu S M / 12-08-2010
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