Keeping promises

Keeping promises: Closing the services gap
Published: March 28, 2007 in Knowledge@W.P. Carey
One of the greatest challenges for all American companies, including those that work business-to-business, is closing the gap between what customers expect to get -- beforehand -- and what they perceive they got -- afterward -- according to Mary Jo Bitner, academic director of the Center for ServicesLeadership, a research center at the W. P. Carey School of Business.
In "Services Marketing: Integrating Customer Focus Across the Firm," a book she co-authored with Valarie Zeithaml of the University of North Carolina, and Dwayne Gremler of Bowling Green State University the marketing professor insists that "services is all about promises."
Think about a firm's promises as a triangle, shesuggests. Label the top point "organization," the right hand point "customers" and the left hand point "service providers." Label the right arm "making promises," and the left arm, "enabling promises." The horizontal base is "keeping promises," the essential customer-retention strategy.
Only when the sides of this triangle are aligned are companies able to keep their promises to customers, andmaintaining alignment is a constant and ongoing challenge, says Bitner. She recommends a strategic approach to keeping the services triangle aligned based on what has become known as the "gaps model of service quality." A team of researchers, including her co-author Valarie Zeithmal,  distilled years of research into the "gaps model," a framework that allows companies to deliver excellent value, year afteryear.
The customer gap – not meeting customer expectations
Bitner describes four challenges captured by the framework (sub-gaps, essentially) that make up the expectation/perception or customer gap:
The listening gap -- not knowing what customers expect
1. The designs and standards gap -- not designing services to meet customer expectations,
2. The service-performance gap -- notperforming the service as designed
3. The communications gap -- companies fail to match performances to external communications.
A company is likely to have an expectations/perception gap if they're failing at any of the four sub-gaps.
Failing to match performances to promises is especially damaging, because customers hear companies make promises, such as "your pizza delivered in 30 minutesor less," but all too often, are let down by the firm's inability to enable that promise.
For instance, you call to order a 30-minute pizza and the order-taker says there's a 40-minute delivery time "because we're busy." Enabling the 30-minute guarantee might mean monitoring nightly ordering patterns, a staff that can flex up and down based on orders and constant communication among key players.Without it, the promise is made, then not fulfilled, and the customer turned off.
Speaking at the 21st Annual Services Leadership Institute in Tempe, Arizona, Bitner suggests approaching customer service from a strategic perspective. Dozens of service executives from companies such as IBM, Harley-Davidson, Avnet, Procter and Gamble, and Caterpillar attended the institute held March 26-28.
Startby asking yourself these key questions: Does your company consistently do what it promises for customers? What is required to fulfill these promises? Who keeps promises in your company: clerks, professionals, subcontractors? Have you prepared employees to enable promise-making, and to keep promises? Most importantly, does everyone from management to front-line employees understand your company'spromises?
The IKEA example
Bitner points to the world's largest furniture retailer -- Sweden-based IKEA -- as an example of a company that, despite a meticulous customer-service approach, was still missing the mark with many customers.
Here's the story: before IKEA opened its Chicago store, a marketing whiz suggested asking groups of customers at other IKEA stores to describe their ideal...