Services marketing researches distinguish between service quality and customer satisfaction. According to Zeithaml and Bitner (2000: 74–75), customer satis-faction consists of five components (not too different from Grönroos’s seven cri-teria, see below): perceived service and product quality, situational factors, per-sonal factors and price. Grönroos points out (2001:123) that the (overall) service quality is experienced first, after which the customer feels satisfaction or dissat-isfaction with the service.
The quality of service perceived by a customer has two dimensions: the tech-nical dimension or the quality of the end-product, and the functional or process dimension. The technical quality is the what of quality: what the consumer gets as a result of the production process and interaction with the service provider.
The quality of the process refers to how the consumer experiences the simulta-neous production and consumption process and the instances of interaction,
‘the moments of truth’, with the service provider’s personnel. The relative im-portance of the what and the how may vary from service to service and from customer to customer (Grönroos 2001: 100–103).
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From the customer’s point of view, quality of service is equal to his/her sub-jective perception of the service. Quality is therefore relative. According to Grön-roos (2001: 105) quality is good if the perceived quality matches the level of quality expected by the customer. This seems to make good sense at least if the customer does not expect poor quality but a level of quality that is close to what s/he requires from that service. Expected quality is affected by, among other things, the service provider’s marketing communications and image, and the customers’ needs and values. In Grönroos‘s (2001: 100–102) model, the service provider’s image is an important element through which the perceived process and technical quality are filtered, leading to the conception of perceived quality.
If the service provider has a good image, customers are more likely to forgive minor mistakes and faults. If the image is bad and a customer still for some rea-son decides to hire the service provider, errors are likely to be regarded as con-firmation of what the customer already knew and have a relatively more serious negative effect on perceived quality. A company’s image is thus the result of ex-pected and perceived quality (Grönroos 2001: 387). It is important to note that in this model also the perceived quality of the outcome, or the technical quality, is seen through the service provider’s image.
Grönroos (2001: 123–124) lists seven criteria for good perceived service quality (mostly as referred to in Edvardsson et al. [1994: 86–87], partially my translation from Finnish):
1. Professionalism and skills (outcome-related criterion)
2. The customers realise that the service provider and his/her personnel have the knowl-edge and skills as well as operational systems and physical resources needed to solve their problems in a professional way.
3. Attitudes and behaviour (process-related criterion)
4. The customers feel that the service personnel (contact staff) are concerned about them and want to solve their problems in a friendly and spontaneous way.
5. Accessibility and flexibility (process-related criterion)
6. The customers feel that the service provider, his/her location, operating hours, staff and operational systems are designed and operate in a way that ensures easy access to the service and preparedness to adjust to the demands and wishes of the customer.
7. Trustworthiness (process-related criterion)
8. The customers know that whatever happens or is agreed upon they can rely on the ser-vice provider and his/her staff to keep their promises and to act in the best interests of the customers.
9. Recovery (process-related criterion)
10. The customers realise that whenever something goes wrong or something unexpected happens, the service provider will immediately take action to keep the situation under control and to find a new acceptable solution.
11. Servicescape (process-related criterion)
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12. The customers feel that the physical environment and other factors in the surroundings of the service encounter help to create a positive experience.
13. Reputation and credibility (image-related criterion)
14. The customers believe that the operations of the service provider can be trusted, that s/he gives value for money and that s/he represents a level of performance and values which can be accepted by the customers.
As seen from the list, most of the criteria are process-related and therefore rep-resent the process dimension of the overall service quality with, surprisingly, only one criterion (professionalism and skills) having to do with the outcome, which is, after all, the reason the customer engages in the transaction in the first place. Grönroos (2001: 100; 123) does point out that the relative importance of these factors varies and that the technical quality is very important when cus-tomers evaluate the overall quality. He argues also that a business strategy based on technical quality can be successful only if the quality of the technical solution offered by the service provider is so high that it cannot be matched by competitors. In many industries that is not the case, which is why improving the process dimensions in order to gain a competitive advantage in the market would be a better strategy (Grönroos 2001: 103–104). This seems to be the rea-son why the process dimensions get so much attention in services marketing lit-erature.
It should be noted that these criteria are not considered only after the service has been performed. Customers also have expectations concerning these criteria and make a decision to hire a service provider based on how well they expect him/her to fulfil them.
Specifically, and very suitably, for professional services, Edvardsson et al.
(1994: 2) propose the term ‘right quality’ which means that “the service provider has met the specifications or requirements which were laid down for the service on the basis of the customers’ demands and needs, and that the customers’ ex-pectations have been fulfilled”. Quality is fulfilling exex-pectations and needs of the customer, the staff and the owners of the company that provides the services, and quality is right when every one of them is satisfied. Edvardsson and his co-authors’ definition is applicable to services with a high professional component, but it looks at quality from the service provider’s perspective. If a client does not know that his/her expectations do not match what s/he actually needs in the service provider’s professional opinion, s/he cannot expect the service provider to satisfy those needs or include them in his/her requirements for the service.
However, if those needs were pointed out to the client, s/he might change his/her expectations regarding the outcome of the service process accordingly and possibly perceive the service process as a whole as having exceeded his/her expectations (in that particular instance – next time s/he will have changed his/her expectations to match his/her needs). So in accordance with the concept
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of right quality it is the professional service provider’s job to adjust the client’s expectations where necessary.
In a way that is similar to this definition of right quality, Ovretveit (2000: 3;
see also Edvardsson et al. 1994: 79) sees three dimensions of quality in health-care and also in other services with a high professional component: first, cus-tomer quality refers to the cuscus-tomer (patient) getting what s/he wants from the service; second, professional quality has to do with the customer getting what s/he needs and whether his/her needs are satisfied in a way that is assessed as correct and necessary by the professional service provider (outcome is one measure); and third, management quality, which is whether the service is pro-vided economically, without errors and in accordance with the law. Professional quality directs attention to the possibility that the customer does not always know what s/he needs (Edvardsson et al. 1994: 79). Additionally, what the cus-tomer wants (cuscus-tomer quality) is not necessarily what s/he needs in the profes-sional’s opinion or what can be achieved in a way that would satisfy the re-quirements of professional quality. Along the same lines as Ovretveit (2000), Thomson-Wohlgemuth and Thomson (2004: 282) state that their ACTS (Ac-quired Capabilities in Translation Systems) model aims to define quality in the translation business based on a principle according to which “[c]onsistent qual-ity is: producing a translation that the translator can be proud of, while mini-mising waste within the organisation, yet maximally meeting the customer’s stated requirements”.
Abdallah (2007: 283–285) takes a bird’s eye view on the translation business and brings into discussion yet another aspect of quality, the ethical one. She sees quality as consisting of three dimensions. The quality of translation (product quality) is influenced not only by how it is produced (process quality) but also by whom and in what conditions (social quality). Social quality includes ethically important aspects such as translators’ work conditions, fees and the mutual re-lationships between the actors involved in translation. The conditions in which translation is carried out are, of course, likely to have an effect on its quality and, in the long run, on the supply of the service. Social quality may also be regarded as part of a translation service provider’s management quality, if the translation service provider is an agency that employs translators or hires freelancers.
Just as clients may sometimes not be fully aware of what they actually need from a professional viewpoint, they can have expectations that are not com-pletely clear. In a study by Ojasalo (2001; see also Ojasalo 1999: 81–85, Grön-roos 2001: 135–137), the different kinds of expectations that customers may have are described in more detail. Like Grönroos (see above), Ojasalo (2001: 1–
21), too, bases his research on the theory of disconfirmation according to which
“service quality and satisfaction result from how well the actual service
1 The page numbers referred to in Ojasalo (2001) are according to the printout of the un-paginated article that is available online. They may not correspond with the page numbering of the original publication.
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ance […] matches the customer’s expectations”. Expectations fall into three groups:
(1) A customer has fuzzy expectations when s/he expects the service provider to improve his/her situation somehow but does not have a clear idea about what it is exactly that should be corrected, what should be done about it and how.
Fuzzy expectations are very real for the customer and affect the perceived qual-ity. It is in the service provider’s interests to define these unclear problems and needs and make them explicit through dialogue with the customer, because when fuzzy expectations are not met by the service provider, the customer will feel disappointed but unable to understand why. S/he may then decide to try another service provider. Specifying fuzzy expectations requires some time and effort also from the customer.
(2) Implicit expectations about some elements of the service are so self-evident to the customer that s/he does not actively or consciously think about them or the possibility that they will not be met. S/he will, however, notice when the service provider does not live up to them. In other words, implicit expecta-tions can cause dissatisfaction in the service but not positive surprises. They are therefore communicated to the translator in the form of negative feedback (if at all). Disappointing a customer is one way of making implicit expectations ex-plicit (to the customer), but a better way would be to reveal them in discussions with the customer before the service is performed.
(3) Explicit expectations refer to “conscious assumptions or wishes about the service in the customer’s mind. The customer pays explicit attention to whether these expectations are met and knows clearly what went wrong if they are not met. However, they are not necessarily expressed openly, at least not all of them” (Ojasalo 2001: 4).
All kinds of expectations can be realistic, unrealistically low or unrealistically high. The customer may also have a set of expectations which includes various degrees of each of the three kinds of expectations. There may be, for instance, implicit expectations about one element of the service and explicit expectations about another. Furthermore, expectations of one and the same customer may vary during the relationship, e.g., explicit expectations may become implicit (Ojasalo 2001: 4–5).
In addition, Ojasalo (2001: 10) notes that, in contrast to consumer services such as restaurants, professional service providers have more responsibility for
“mak[ing] sure that the defined problem and the designed solution serve the best interests of the client, not only in the short term, but also and especially in the long term.” A similar point is made by Thomson-Wohlgemuth and Thomson (2004: 269). This is in line with the concept of ‘right quality’ and Ovretveit’s three dimensions of quality discussed above, emphasising the importance of providing a service which is of good quality from the professional point of view even if the perceived quality might not seem ideal to the customer right away.
What is said above about different expectations also highlights the fact that the problem of quality in a service like the translation business, is that of
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ing the consistency of quality to ensure that the customers get the quality they have learned to expect (Grönroos 2001: 84).