Total Quality Management in Services

Although quality improvement is being sought, and total quality management is being applied in the service sector, the majority of applications which have been described are in environments similar to manufacturing in some important respects. Some of the cases are, evertheless, concerned with issues such as: seeking to achieve better service by programmes to shape employee behaviour, encouraging attention to the customer’s requirements, and coping with the inherent variability engendered by interaction between employees and customers; and as such are particularly relevant to the distinctly “service” aspects of businesses. As a precursor to improving service quality it is necessary to be able to define and measure quality in that context. Research which seeks to show that consumers’ perceptions of service quality are based on the difference between their actual experience of the service and what they expected form a platform for both definition and measurement. Reviews the models of service quality which have been built on this concept, along with work which has shown that consumers take into account several factors, not just one, when deciding about quality. Describes some of the dimensions of service quality along with scales which have been developed for their measurement. This is all in preparation for application in a survey to evaluate perceptions of services with differing characteristics, which is described in the final article in this series.