- Reliability.
- Responsiveness.
- Assurance.
- Empathy.
- Tangibles.
This method consists of two sections, the initial section and the second section.
The first one is for collecting customer’s expectation for a class of services, and the second one collects the customer’s perceptions for a particular service firm.
The service quality is calculated from the differences between the ratings that customers assign to paired expectation and perception statements.10
For the Lewis Partnership this method in our opinion is not adequate, because they need concrete information of the customers of the service they offer
This method consists in the measurement of the gap between expected service of the customer and the perceived service.
The information is collected through a questionnaire which the company sends or facilitates to their customers, so they can receive the expected feedback.
GAP 1 appears when the Management doesn’t understand how their customers formulate their expectations, based on a number of sources: experiences with the company and its competitors, personal needs, advertising and the communication with friends.
GAP 2 result when the Manager isn’t able to fix target levels of the service quality of the company.
GAP 3 is known as the service performance gap, due to that the delivery of the service is not the expected by the Management.
GAP 4 is the discrepancy between service delivery and external communications in the form of exaggerated promises and lack of information provided to contact personnel.11
This is the most adequate method for the Lewis Partnership, because we receive concrete information about the service offered from the own customers.
This method is to study if the customer has received a service which satisfied his expectations. So if the service covers his expectations he will be satisfied and if the service exceeds his expectations he will consider the service as excellent.
So the tolerance zone is the segment the customer can tolerate until he consider that the service is worthless and which is the excellence level.
This is the last method to evaluate service. It uses the concept that the customer is part of the service process, so by identifying and analysing the observations the consumer has while we are offering the service.
Due to this method we can know and improve the uncovered problems of the service process.
It is also used to evaluate the Third Gap, which was mentioned above.
9 Fitzsimmons+Fitzsimmons, 2001. Service Management, Operation Strategy and Technology Strategy. McGraw Hill, p.48
11 6 Fitzsimmons+Fitzsimmons, 2001. Service Management, Operation Strategy and Technology Strategy. McGraw Hill, p.45-47
