MKT Chapter 13

Service quality is defined as ______.

customers' perceptions of how well a service meets or exceeds their expectations

When using zone of tolerance marketing metrics, the five scores assigned to service quality dimensions will always total ______.

100%

Which of the following is an example of a high tech, high human effort service interaction?

A brain surgeon using a minuscule robot to make microscopic incisions

Communication

A restaurant advertises they are open for breakfast, but when guests arrive on Sunday morning, there is a sign on the door indicating they only open for brunch at 11:00.

Which of the following is most likely to lead to high levels of customer loyalty?

High customer satisfaction ratings

One of the best ways for managers to reduce the ______ gap is to conduct ongoing research and regularly talk with employees to explain what customers expect to get from the brand and the firm.

knowledge

The ________ gap shows the difference between a customer's expectations and what the company thinks the customer expects.

knowledge

A golf course manager is concerned about the quality of service the staff is providing to guests and wants to implement some changes. What is the best way to ensure that employees buy into the plan?

Seek employee input when setting goals.

One of the most effective methods to assess how well a firm is delivering adequate service to consumers is to employ the ______ Model to evaluate their service provision.

Service Gaps

Which of the following characteristics is not one that distinguishes services from products?

Volatility

One of the distinct advantages of heterogeneity of services is that it enables the provider to ______ the service and not deliver a standardized, cookie-cutter approach uniformly to every buyer.

customize

In addition to providing service employees with emotional and instrumental support, management should offer the staff ______ that reward them for providing customers with good service.

incentives

The ________ gap is the difference between the company's perceptions of the customer's expectations and the service standards it sets.

standards

Knowledge gap

The difference between customer expectations and what the firm perceives the customer to expect

Standards gap

The difference between the firm's perceptions of customers expectations and the service standards it sets

Delivery gap

The difference between the firm's service standards and the actual service it provides to customers

One method to recover from a service delivery problem is to provide ______ fairness, by which customers perceive they are getting an equivalent return for the inconvenience they suffered when the service was not delivered as expected.

distributive

If a customer issues a complaint about poor service but is compensated in a way that he or she feels offsets the inconvenience of the service failure, the customer has received ______.

distributive fairness

Communications gap

Be realistic in telling potential buyers about the services that can be provided and manage those customer expectations effectively.

Empathy

Caring, individualized attention provided to customers

First Local Bank customers have raised a number of complaints about the amount of time and effort it takes to receive certain services from the bank's tellers and customer service representatives. Which of the following is a method First Local Bank could use to give customers greater control over the bank's services?

Incorporate technology such as automated teller machines or online banking.

Point-of-purchase surveys

Inexpensively collects customer's service perceptions in the process of exchange.

A cosmetics store has a list of service goals for its employees. One of the goals is to "give every customer as much attention as they need." What is the problem with this goal?

It is neither specific nor measurable.

Joe owns a large retail company and wants to find out more about his customers' service expectations. Which one of the following is the best way for Joe to gain this insight?

Joe needs to engage in structured market research on his industry and brand.

Assurance

Knowledge and courtesy by employees and their ability to convey trust and confidence

Mary went to the local supermarket, where she shopped regularly, to purchase her groceries for the week. Which of the following was a delivery gap that resulted in a service failure by the grocery store?

Mary had to wait a long time in the checkout line because the clerk kept making errors using the cash register.

Mike is the manager of a sandwich shop and received a complaint from a customer unhappy because it took too long to get his food. Mike apologized to the customer and sent him a coupon for a free sandwich for the next time he visited. Why is it important for Mike to listen to the customer and provide feedback?

Mike is able to identify a way to improve service; he can schedule labor appropriately and set benchmarks.

Lilly went to the Yummy Fork for lunch, and when her food arrived, it was not what she ordered. She later posted a negative comment about the Yummy Fork on a blog. Which one of the five service dimensions was used by Lilly to determine she did not like the service by the Yummy Fork?

Reliability

Marissa works for a local restaurant. Each time a customer reports a compliment to a manager about an employee, the employee receives a star pin to wear. What is the advantage of the "star pin" to the restaurant and Marissa?

The star pin is a reward that reinforces the provision of excellent customer service and makes the employee feel recognized.

Which of the following is NOT a method to reduce delivery gaps?

Threaten to terminate employees

When is empowering employees most important?

When the service is individualized

Responsiveness

Willingness to help customers and provide prompt service

Customer service is best represented by which of the following statements? Customer service ______.

adds to marketing efforts by helping to meet the customers' needs and wants

Janet had to deal with a very difficult customer who wanted to be given complimentary services such as free flights and upgrades on future flights when he very vocally complained in the airport about delays and lost luggage. He screamed at Janet and was very offensive. Her supervisor made Janet feel a little better about the unsettling experience by offering ______ support and commending her on how she handled the difficult passenger.

emotional

A customer who is dissatisfied with a restaurant's service delivery and finds it to be quite different from what was promised in the advertising is very likely to do which of the following?

-Communicate the negative experience via word of mouth -Not return to the restaurant -Communicate the negative experience via the Internet

A business that experiences service delivery gaps can use which of the following methods to improve the quality of its service?

-Empower employees to work in the customer's best interest. -Provide incentives and support for service providers. -Implement self-service technologies.

Which of the following are benefits that a service provider receives from engaging in effective service recovery?

-Increased purchase intention -Improved word of mouth

What are the benefits for service providers of using technology?

-It creates less heterogeneity than human service providers do. -It gives customers increased control over the service. -It offers customers access to a wider variety of services and information.

Which of the following are characteristics that make marketing services different from product marketing?

-Perishable -Intangible -Heterogeneous

What are some ways in which customer expectations can be managed when the service is delivered?

-Retailers warning customers when supplies of sale items are limited -Automated messages telling customers how long they will be on hold -Notifications informing online customers when items are out of stock

Which of the following are potential sources of heterogeneity of service quality at a hair salon?

-The same hair stylist working at different times of the day, week, or month -Two different hair stylists working at the same location

What are some common problems caused by the use of technology in a service setting?

-The technology does not perform adequately. -Customers do not understand how to use the technology. -Customers dislike replacing humans with machines.

What is the purpose of the "management by walking around" strategy?

-To have managers understand what their service providers face each day -To provide opportunities for managers to interact with customers directly

One of the best methods to ensure that guests at Hilton Hotels receive quality service is to solicit suggestions and feedback from ______.

-employees -guests

Empowerment of employees would be most important in which of the following service situations?

A bride is unhappy with the hair style the stylist has created on the morning of her wedding.

Which of the following products or services is considered perishable in the sense that it cannot be stockpiled?

A dental exam

Delivery

A restaurant usually serves fresh bread made on the premises, but at the end of the day the ovens are shut down early and only cold loaves are available.

Which of the following is an example of tangible restitution?

A voucher for a free night in a hotel

Reliability

Ability to perform the service dependably and accurately

Customer complaint behavior

Analyzes the unfulfilled needs of customers in regards to their perceptions of the performed service used to modify future performance.

Tangibles

Appearance of physical facilities, equipment, personnel, and communication materials

Which of the following situations best illustrates how a firm can offer employees emotional support and stand behind the employees' actions?

At a copy center, part-time employees are encouraged to turn over any unhappy customer to the supervisor immediately.

Knowledge gap

Conduct research to better understand what customers want.

How can a salesperson manage customer expectations regarding the delivery of a service?

Coordinate the order with those responsible for the delivery

Knowledge

Diners at a restaurant think the portions are too small, but the manager is unaware of this complaint.

________ fairness refers to customers' desire to be compensated a fair amount to correct a perceived loss that resulted from a service failure.

Distributive

______ is a customer's perception of the benefits s/he received compared with the costs.

Distributive fairness

Lisa is a manager at a customer service call center for a footwear manufacturer. One of the customer service representatives, Mark, is upset because he just finished a call in which the customer berated him for the poor quality of a pair of shoes. Mark is worried that he may be punished for offering the customer a refund and a 20% discount on her next pair of shoes, but Lisa reassures him that he made the right decision and tells a few jokes to get his spirits up. What type of support has Lisa provided?

Emotional

True or false: Service providers that have high customer satisfaction ratings this year are unlikely to achieve the same level of satisfaction next year.

False

True or false: The zone of tolerance is a program that collects customer inputs and integrates them into managerial decisions.

False

According to the Service Gaps Model, which of the following is NOT one of the gaps that might be encountered by a service provider in meeting the customer's needs?

Financial

Zone of tolerance

Identifies the area between the desired and minimum standard of acceptable service based on five service dimensions.

Delivery gap

Improve employee performance through support, incentives, and the use of technology.

Susie decided to try a weight-loss program by Extreme Fit Foods that promised she could lose 15 pounds her first week. Susie followed the guidelines exactly and only lost 1 pound the first week. She is planning on canceling her membership and telling her other friends not to try Extreme Fit Foods. What mistake did Extreme Fit Foods make?

It needs to communicate accurate results information to meet customers' expectations

The self-checkout counter at a local grocery store is which type of technological service interaction?

Low technology, low human effort

Which of the following best illustrates a specific service standard that is directly measurable?

Make eye contact with every customer and greet them with a smile.

Standards

Management believes that customers in a restaurant think the service is very slow, however, management allows servers to stand around and chat.

During the busy holiday shopping season, a cashier accidentally under charges the customer $1. The customer offers to wait while the cashier rings the item again. With many customers waiting in line, the cashier forgoes company guidelines and lets the customer keep the item at the price she was charged. What is this an example of?

Procedural fairness

Which of the following is NOT a method by which managers can provide rewards and incentives to employees?

Providing technology and instrumental support at the facility

An interior design consulting firm offers a $100 gift card to the employee with the highest customer satisfaction scores at the end of each month. Which method of eliminating the delivery gap is this an example of?

Rewards and incentives

Standards gap

Set appropriate service goals and measure service performance.

Voice-of-customer program

Systematically collects customer inputs and integrates them into managerial decisions.

Communications gap

The difference between actual service provided to customers and the service that the firm's promotion program promises

Jane has multiple managers at her retail job. It is company policy that customers cannot return items without a receipt, but sometimes managers will allow customers to receive store credit for their returns. One day a customer was irate that Jane would not allow a return for store credit because the manager on duty adhered to the company policy. The customer wrote a complaint about Jane to the corporate office. What needs to change about this situation?

The support that managers provide must be consistent and coherent throughout the organization.

What problem might occur if a grocery store decides to install self-checkout devices?

The technology will be too challenging for some customers.

True or false: Delivery gaps always result in a service failure.

True

True or false: To assess service quality, it is necessary to understand both customers' perceptions and their expectations.

True

Is providing rewards to employees for excellent services a key part of customer service program? Why or why not?

Yes, rewards reinforce behavior that encourages employees to continually give great service.

A firm wants to understand both the customer's expectations for service and the minimal level of service he or she will accept before going elsewhere. Which marketing metric should the firm study?

Zone of tolerance

Heterogeneity in service delivery at a restaurant can result from all of the following EXCEPT ______.

a manager who designs a specific way for all hostesses to accept reservations over the phone

A tire store finds that its business is heavily skewed to the weekend, and few customers arrive on Monday through Wednesday. Since rotating, balancing, and replacing tires is a service that cannot be stockpiled, one of the dilemmas facing the firm is ______.

balancing supply and demand

In addition to empowering and rewarding service providers, as well as offering instrumental support, service managers are advised to ______.

be consistent and predictable in their support

One way for a firm to reduce the ______ gap is to ensure that the sales force does not make promises the firm cannot keep.

communication

Ryanair advertised the lowest rates in Europe with fares of $12 between Paris and Munich. However, when Bill arrived at the airport, he had to pay $28 in taxes, $25 for one small carry-on bag, $6 for a non-alcoholic beverage, and $2.50 to use the restroom on the plane. Between Ryanair and the customer there is a ______.

communication gap

If the Americana Hotel has successfully closed the standards gap, the knowledge gap, and the delivery gap in providing customers with service, it is still necessary to close the ________ gap.

communications

Since service delivery is not always uniform, it is important for the provider to be sure to close the ______ gap and not promise more in their messages to buyers than they can deliver on a regular basis.

communications

An effective method to assess customer service expectations is to analyze customer ______ behavior in which management is told by buyers what dissatisfies them.

complaint

In delivery of a service, one of the most important early steps is addressing the knowledge gap, or the ability to understand ______.

consumer expectations

An airline employee is able to make a decision at the moment of assigning a passenger a seat at the gate when it is obvious the flier is in a wheel chair. The firm has _____ the employee by allowing him to move the passenger to first-class seating.

empowered

When a firm such as Ruth's Chris Steak House tells servers to "use your best judgment" in serving a customer who is not satisfied with his or her $40 steak, it is allowing the server to make decisions at the point of delivery. This is called ________.

empowerment

A continuing dilemma for marketers of services is to understand buyers' ________, which means to understand in advance what they think will be delivered based on their previous experiences and knowledge.

expectations

Customers' expectations of the type of service they will receive is primarily based on their knowledge and ______.

experiences

A restaurant is facing a problem in service delivery on a night when there are twice as many customers dining as usual. An integral part of recovery of the service dilemma is to provide both distributive and procedural ________ in resolving the delays in getting all customers served.

fairness

When a hotel has a service delivery problem such as a broken air conditioning system on a very hot weekend, one critical element of service recovery is to ______.

find a solution that seems fair to all customers

The failure of a service to meet the customer's expectations is known as a service ________

gap

Jane has realized that she does not enjoy taking a taxi to work because there is substantial ______ in the delivery of the service depending on who is driving her cab that day.

heterogeneity

One of the characteristics that makes services different from product marketing is the fact there is tremendous ______ in delivery based on how the provider is performing the task at different times. The same waiter, for example, might provide excellent service one day, and the next day, when he is not feeling well, his delivered service might be terrible.

heterogeneity

Since humans' work output cannot be standardized to the same degree as the output of a machine, one substantial difference between the marketing of services and products is the ______ of service delivery.

heterogeneity

Three of the dermatologist's patients have very different skin problems. Because of the ______ of services, the doctor needs to customize each patient's diagnosis and treatment.

heterogeneity

When many students are complaining about a problem at an online university, one of the best things the university can do to better serve its students is to ______.

honestly listen to students' complaints and use their messages to build a committed relationship

The primary reason there is greater heterogeneity in services than in products is because ______.

human inputs generate differences

One difference between products and services is demonstrated by a hair salon, where the stylist delivers the service at the same time the customer receives it. This is called ______.

inseparability

One of the basic ways in which services differ from products is that production and consumption are ______ from each other. Consequently, service providers often include options for the customer to become more involved in the production of the service, which usually results in greater customer satisfaction.

inseparable

Services are ________, which means that they cannot be touched, tasted, or seen.

intangible

The most fundamental difference between services and goods is that services are ______.

intangible

A service provider offers many amenities that he believes the customer desires, but the delivered services are not what is expected by the customer. This is an example of a ______ gap.

knowledge

The marketing manager needs to communicate with customers and employees on an ongoing basis in order to understand buyers' expectations and to reduce the ______ gap.

knowledge

One of the first steps in service recovery is that the firm needs to allow the customer to air his grievance and for the firm to ______ him.

listen to

The delivery of quality service is the task of everyone in the firm, but the commitment to quality service is established and illustrated best by _____, which establishes policy and sets examples for the entire company.

management

One of the problems in using customer complaint behavior to assess buyers' service expectations is that ______.

managers often are more concerned with resolving the complaint than analyzing the essence of the problem

For the marketing manager to be able to deliver consistent quality service, it is imperative to set ______.

measurable goals that are based on customer expectations

An important element of offering emotional support to employees is to ______ when they have been empowered to make decisions in dealing with the customer.

not punish them

Service providers cannot inventory or stockpile things like haircuts during slow times to "sell" later when the facility is busy. This characteristic of services is called ______.

perishability

United Airlines flies a plane from Los Angeles to New York at 8 o'clock on Tuesday morning only 25% full. On Friday, the same flight is overbooked by 15%. One of the traits of service marketing is this quality of _____, in which the flights must be delivered on the day scheduled or it is lost.

perishability

The perceived equity of the process used to resolve complaints is called ________ ________

procedural ; fairness

After waiting in line over 2 hours to experience a new ride at an amusement park, the ride breaks. If everyone waiting is given a "rain check" with the sequential order of their line location enabling them to return in 4 hours and re-queue in order. Most guests will be satisfied, as they are experiencing ______.

procedural fairness

Despite having to deal with difficult guests, the service provider can be motivated to provide "service with a smile" when the firm ______.

provides support and incentives to motivate quality service

Poor service delivery can be converted into a positive interaction through service ______, an effort that resolves the problem fairly and shows the buyer that the firm is listening to the complaint.

recovery

Firms are able to gain a better understanding of customers' service expectations by using quantitative and qualitative market ______, which can be extensive and expensive.

research

One of the most important factors for adequate service recovery is for the provider to ______.

respond to the customer and resolve the problem quickly

The employees at the Ritz-Carlton are renowned for delivering good-quality service to hotel guests. Their behavior is probably due to ______.

seeing management treating customers well and following the behavior

Customer ________ refers to human or mechanical activities undertaken by firms to help satisfy their customers' needs and wants.

service

A customer's expectations for a single service provider might vary substantially based on the ______.

situation

McDonald's has a policy that, in addition to ketchup, mustard, and onions, all burgers must have two pickles. This contributes to efforts to reduce the ______ gap and provide measurable service quality based on expectations.

standards

The manager of a four-star hotel learns that the bathrooms in the hotel are receiving complaints for being dirty. He believes that hotel guests are being too picky and he decides not to instruct housekeeping to clean the bathrooms more thoroughly. Because the hotel does not change the cleaning policy, there is a ______ gap.

standards

When there is a service failure, customers typically want some sort of material compensation that offsets their inconvenience or loss. In other words, they want ______.

tangible restitution

The marketing metric used to evaluate if a firm is performing on the five service quality dimensions by finding the minimum level of acceptable service is ______.

the Zone of Tolerance

The zone of tolerance refers to ______.

the area between customers' desired expectations and the minimum level of acceptable service

A customer with a complaint about the way in which a washing machine repair was made will become increasingly more annoyed with the service provider ______.

the longer it takes to get an answer from the firm

Procedural fairness is defined as ______.

the perceived fairness of the process used to solve complaints

A systematic program that collects customer inputs and integrates them into managerial decisions is a(n) ________-of-customer program.

voice