Need service quality improvement for your business? Guidance for field services by applying service model. 

Customer is king. Whatever we do in field service is to satisfy their ultimate needs to gain revenues for our firms. Value occurs when service quality standards meet. While all of us know it’s a cliche. It’s always easy said than done!

Introducing service quality definition

Customer satisfaction and service 

Service quality is seen as the output of the service delivery system. It has a strong correlation with customer satisfaction as service quality results from overall customer evaluation before and after service consumption. In that sense, SQ is briefly defined as how companies meet or exceed customer expectations. Therefore, scholars have summarized it into a classical formula: SQ=P-E, where P refers to customer-perceived performance after service consumption while E refers to customer-perceived expectation before that. 

Why is service quality important?

In a nutshell, good service quality ensures customer satisfaction and effective cost management. They increase profit in the end.  

Firstly, good SQ renders a positive image to clients, which is related to a good reputation. It’s true that when people are satisfied with your service quality, they are likely to choose your service again. Moreover, they would recommend your company to their families and friends. 

Secondly, good SQ renders your products with unique selling points and improved competitiveness. If you are in an industry that offers similar services, your service quality will distinguish yours from others. It’s your unique selling point that helps improve competitiveness. 

While you can provide the unique SQ distinguished from your competitors, you can charge premium prices. Besides, the benefits arising from a good reputation can ensure cheaper advertising and promotion costs. With premium prices and lower operation costs, your business will likely generate a more reasonable amount of profits. 

Introducing service quality dimensions: how customer satisfaction is affected 

To be specific, factors that contribute to service quality have been unlocked. In general, scholars have come up with 5 key service quality dimensions to describe how service quality affects customer satisfaction and profitability further in the end. These factors are reliability, assurance, responsiveness, tangibles and empathy.

Reliability 

It defines as how firms provide a service correctly for the first time. It also indicates the commitment of firms to their provided services. It’s the essential dimension among all. 

 Assurance 

It defines as employee’s courtesy and knowledge, and their ability to transfer service confidence to their clients. In other words, it’s related to the attitude of employees while they offer services. 

Responsiveness

It’s related to employees’ willingness while they provide instruction on service to clients promptly and accordingly. 

Tangibles

Tangible items such as physical facilities in the firm that clients interact with. They can be firms’ external appearance, service equipment, opening hours, and business efficiency.  

Empathy 

It means the caring and personal attention provided to clients. The core value of empathy is to resonate with clients for their specific needs.

Service quality management: tips for improving service quality standard in field services

Perceived expectation can’t be easily managed. However, we can improve perceived performance by reinforcing service quality controls according to service quality dimensions. 

Clarify your service range and adhere to your promise — Improve reliability

Well, it sounds easy. The truth is each firm is ambitious and wants to be everything. However, you can’t! It’s subject to your company size, experience and funding. Don’t be greedy. Just clarify what you can offer. For example, an interior design company claims to provide customized design. However, due to their limited expertise, they fail to do so. It would, therefore, significantly deteriorate service perceived performance. According to the SQ equation, while customers have high perceived expectations on customer design (i.e. customized design tailored to their specific needs), it would lead to low service quality. Also, remember to adhere to deliver your promised services.

Train your employees and establish a feasible KPI system — Improve assurance, responsiveness and empathy

Assurance, responsiveness and empathy are related to employee performance in determining service quality. Therefore, it’s crucial for field services to train your employees frequently and ensure they deliver decent SQ. The purpose of training employees is to 1. improve their service knowledge 2. correct their attitudes while facing customers. There are several methods to provide training to your employees: 

On the other hand, facts have proven that KPI can strengthen employee morale and motivate employees to perform the best they can be. When people feel responsible for KPIs, they are more likely to push themselves and receive more satisfaction from a job well done. While SQ is linked to employee KPI, cleaning service, for example, employers link customer rating and feedback with employee bonus pay. Employees are likely to show their greatest responsiveness, assurance and empathy to clients. 

When you have improved these dimensions, service perceived performance is likely to increase. While perceived expectation remains the same, greater perceived performance ensures better SQ. 

External tip: Using employee management app to help improve service quality 

Besides, it’s a good idea to manage your employees by using apps. For example, Marki, an employee work management app that can improve your work management efficiency. It’s also a watermark app for business. With accurate timestamps, location displays and customized watermarks based on job content, employees take photos of their work scenarios. Then the app can store these photos and automatically categorize them into the respective archives. Moreover, with the team moment function, employers can add clients into the group to help track work progress. Marki users in the same group can share, view and comment on each other photos as means of monitoring. As you can see, Marki can help improve your employee performance!

External video FYI: Introducing Marki

Invest in your work equipment and physical environment — Improve tangibles

Even though field services extensively require employees to perform duty remotely, when clients approach your firms for inquiry, your work environment would be their very first impression. Of course, you don’t want to let them down. Imagine your place is untidy, documents are everywhere on the table, and employees look undressed. What would you think your clients would perceive? 

Tangibles provide the customer proof of the quality of service. Therefore, to improve tangibles, you should reasonably invest in enhancing your physical facilities. It includes the cleanliness of your offices, employee uniforms, which are the service touchpoints. Furthermore, the work equipment which field workers use on performing their duty should be clean and renewed on a timely basis. Likewise, by doing so, perceived performance is likely to increase so that it can improve SQ.   

In conclusion, service quality is related to the difference between client perceptions before and after service consumption. It’s important because it eventually determines the sustainable profitability of a business. Also, service quality includes 5 key dimensions. They are reliability, assurance, responsiveness, empathy and tangibles. To improve service quality, firms should take service range, employee performance and physical facilities into consideration. With the use of a watermark app, it helps manage your employees, which can further lead to better service quality.

Marki is dedicated to providing solutions for different field services, including security guard services, construction progress management, property management, landscaping management and cleaning service. Click for more details.      

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