1. Part one: Service Quality in the eyes of the customer
Researching service quality –
The concept of a service quality information system 1

2. How to research service quality, maintain and improve it
“What you can not measure that you can not manage”
Plan a system of systematic information gathering about perceived service from customers
Use different manners to gather information about service quality
Make a plan how to use the information to maintain and improve service quality

3. Ways to gather information about service quality
Questionnaires
Commonly used
Easy to conduct, easy to outsource
Can give information about service quality from a large number of customers
Easy to analyze
Questions, answering scale, open questions
Critical incidents technique
Qualitative way to study customers’ quality perceptions
The so called Critical incidents are looked for in customers’ experiences, and then they are mapped in different categories
Narratives
Customersù stories are analysed in a way how the story is told
(the struture of the story, the themes that exist in the story etc.)
Internet feedback on companiesì web sites commonly take a story form
Mystery customers
A group of researchers/experts observe the service quality attributes as common customers and then later on reports about their observations on qualtiy provided by the company
Think about the strenghts and the weaknesses of different ways to measure quality?

4. A Listening Organization
Comments cards
Customer Questionnaires
Market Research
Customer Complaints
Mystery Shopping
Corridor Converstions
Lost customer and New customer discussions
Focus Groups External customers 
Customer Interface
Employee feedback Internal Customers
Employee reports
Focus Groups
Employees’ discussions 4

5. Companies that gather sytematically customer information with multiple research methods make better profits
(A finding from a study Brannick et al about listening organizations)

6. How to use information about service quality
Information about service quality can be related to three different levels:
Strategic
Operational
Service encounters at the customer interface
Strategic and operational decisions, changements and improvements are more timetaking that changes and improvements in service encounters

7. Service strategy triad, service quality and service quality improvements
Target market
Who are the customers?
Service Quality
Service quality
Service quality
Service encounters
What does happen when the service
and the customer meet and interact?
Service Concept
What is the service offering?
Service delivery system
Service Design choices
How will the service be delivered?

8. Thank you for your attention
Looking forward for the next lecture