Quality Makes Perfect (3): What is Service Quality Gap?

Service Quality Gap indicates the difference between the service expected by the customers and the service they actually perceived or received . The wider the gap because of expectation is greater than performance, the more dissatisfied would be the customers towards the perceived service quality.

There are seven gaps in the service quality concept, Gap1, Gap2, Gap3, Gap4, Gap5, Gap 6 and Gap7. The three important gaps, which are more associated with the external customers are Gap1, gap5 and Gap6.

• The existence of Gap1 is due to not knowing what customers expect from the service
• Gap2 exists because of the wrong service quality standard adopted by the company
• Gap3 is the service-performance gap; eventhough the company has put forward the right quality standard the worker who delivered the service has a very low performance in doing it.
• Gap4 is when the promises do not match the delivery; the company promises different thing and delivers a different thing to the customer.
• Gap5 is the discrepancy between customer expecations and their perceptions of service delivered.
• Gap 6 si the discrepancy between customers expectations and the employees' perceptions.
• Lastly, gap 7 is the discrepancy between employees' perceptions and management perceptions.

So, to win the heart of the customers, the company should put forward certain strategies that could close any possible gaps. The three important gaps to be closed would be Gap1, gap5 and Gap6 as they are more associated with the customers. Therefore to labour the interest of the customers towards our service we must provide services without gaps.

Similarly in school, if we want to win the heart of our students as they are the customers to us we must provide services far better than what they expect from the school. However with the unique kind of services provided by school and the unique kind of customers that we have would that be possible to inspire a high quality standard kind of school? To know the real answer to this problem we should do a lot of research on our service as well as on our customers...the journey should have started here....