Gap 4 between service delivery and external

External communication of the service provider is the key determinant of cus-tomer’s expectations. External communications can affect the customers’ percep-tions of delivered service and also their expectapercep-tions about the service. Discrep-ancies between external communication and service delivery affect the customer’s assessments of service quality (gap 5). Gap 4 is caused mainly by the breakdown in coordination between those in charge of promoting and describing the service to customers and those responsible for the service. When individuals in a group do not understand the reality of the actual service delivery, they often make exag-gerated promises or fail to communicate the customer’s aspects of service in spite of the intention to serve them well. (Zeithaml et al. 1990: 43-45)

All communication that does not over-promise or misrepresent as well as appro-priate and accurate organizational communication, personal selling, and advertis-ing are vital in deliveradvertis-ing services that customers perceive as high quality service.

(Zeithaml et al. 1990: 115)

Accurate and appropriate communication about services offered is the responsi-bility of operations and marketing. Operations must deliver and act as promised in communications. Marketing must at the same time reflect what actually happens in service encounters. When organizations neglect to inform customers of special quality assurance actions that are not visible to customer, gap 4 can occur.

(Zeithaml et al. 1990: 115)

Differences between external communications and service delivery, in the form of absence of exaggerated information about aspects of service delivery to customer or promises, can very efficiently affect customers’ and consumers’ perception of service quality. There can be found two key factors to contribute to gap 4: pro-pensity to over-promise in communications and inadequate horizontal

communi-cations among human resources, operations and marketing. (Zeithaml et al. 1990:

116-117)

Inadequate horizontal communications

Communication in organizations between different functional areas, such as op-erations and marketing, is necessary to achieve common targets and goals in or-ganization. In situations where horizontal communication channels or communi-cation across different functions are not open, perceived quality is in danger.

(Zeithaml et al. 1990: 117)

Opening channels of communication between operations and advertising

Advertising should always reflect what customers feel and experience in the ac-tual service. Exaggeration can put service quality perceptions in danger. Commu-nication and coordination between service providers and advertising is vital in closing gap 4. A common problem is that advertising has already promised the customer that some expectation will be fulfilled before informing the operational level of it. By monitoring actual service encounters or requesting for opinions input from operations employees during the marketing and advertising process this problem can be avoided. When operations and advertising personnel talk with each other, customers can be led to expect that contact personnel can deliver, and this way gap 4 can be narrowed. (Zeithaml et al. 1990: 118-119)

Opening channels between operations and sales

Mechanisms for opening channels of communication between operations employ-ees and sales can take many forms, both informal and formal. Team meetings, planning meetings or workshops where departments interact can help to clarify the issues and allow each department to understand its capabilities and goals. In-volving operational personnel in face-to-face meetings together with sales per-sonnel is a good solution for operational perper-sonnel to understand the perceptive of the sales personnel. (Zeithaml et al. 1990: 120)

Opening channels of communication between operations, marketing and human recourses

The service received by employees in the human resource department as internal customers has a big influence on the way they serve external customers. Motiva-tion, training, incentives and selection must be aligned with objectives of the ser-vice quality in the organization. This is needed if these internal customers are expected to deliver high-quality service to external customers. (Zeithaml et al. 19 90: 120)

Differences in procedures and policies across departments or branches

Consistency in procedures and policies is very important when providing service quality across branches and departments. If we see that managers of individual branches or outlets have a big role in the autonomy concerning policies and pro-cedures, customers may not receive similar quality across the departments or branches. In this case, there may be a difference in what customers expect and what they receive from one branch to another. In such circumstances the size of gap 4 may be large. (Zeithaml et al. 1990:121-122)

Providing consistent service across outlets and branches

A company must create and develop a method or mechanism to ensure uniform-ity. A set of standards gives a basic structure for the business. Consistency can also be found through setting targets or goals for service quality – outcomes that are visible to customers, but still giving the possibility to outlets to use their own methods or processes to achieve their targets or goals. (Zeithaml et al. 1990: 122-123)

Propensity to over-promise

Over-promises in advertising, selling and other organizational communications are frequently facts in companies, due to hard competition. The propensity to over-promise creates external organizational communications/ for the external organization communications that do not exactly reflect what customers receive in actual service encounters (Zeithaml et al. 1990:123)

Developing effective and appropriate communications about service quality To be effective and appropriate, service quality communications must 1) help customers understand their roles in performing the service 2) deal with the fea-tures that are most important to customers and deal with the quality dimensions 3) accurately reflect what customers actually receive in the service encounter.

(Zeithaml et al. 1990: 123-124)

Emphasizing primary quality determinants

When communicating service quality, it usually begins with understanding the perspectives of service quality and the aspects which are most important to cus-tomers. Isolating quality dimensions that are most important for customers puts a focus on marketing and advertising efforts. Giving the priority to the most impor-tant dimension or dimensions of service quality in more effective communications is the key action. (Zeithaml et al. 1990: 124)

Expectations of the customer for reliability are high, and customers rank reliabil-ity as the most important one of the five dimensions. Before choosing dimensions that are less important for company marketing or advertising than reliability, it is essential to obtain perceptions of reliability from the customer. (Zeithaml et al.

1990: 124)

Managing customers’ expectations

In many studies, findings are similar. Customers’ growing or falling expectations can be the result of the customer’s perceptions of service quality. An essential part of the strategy to attain perceived quality service is to manage customers’

expectations. Expectations that customers bring to service are affected by their own evaluations of its quality. The higher the expectation is, the higher must be the quality included in the delivered service to be perceived as high quality. Un-derstanding the actual levels of service delivery is vital to the marketing or sales department. (Zeithaml et al. 1990: 125)

Expectations are reference points or standards against which a company is judged.

It can be said that letting customers know what is possible and what is not and what are the reasons can minimize gap 4. This can be considered to manage cus-tomers’ expectations. Organizations must understand the factors that influence the expectations in order to manage these expectations. Customers’ experience of service, word of mouth communication and the customer’s needs are uncontrolla-ble sources of expectations. These factors cannot be controlled by the organiza-tion, and in-depth understanding and expectations from these sources may lead to strategies that finally may improve perceptions of service (Zeithaml et al. 1990:

125)

Controllable sources of customers’ expectations, such as personal selling, price, company advertising and tangibles associated with the service are to be critically assessed in determining the expectations that customers hold for a service.

(Zeithaml et al. 1990: 126)

To manage customer expectations is to introduce and describe the service deliv-ery process and to provide a choice of quicker and lower-quality provision versus slower, higher-quality provision. Marketing reflects accurate and full understand-ing of the operations function. This marketunderstand-ing tunnel between operations and sales is vital in managing expectations. (Zeithaml et al. 1990: 126)

The price is believed to be setting expectations for the quality of service, espe-cially in cases where other cues to quality are not receivable. Lack of information

by customer often leads to a situation where the customer uses price as a surro-gate for quality. (Zeithaml et al. 1990: 127)

The customer and their role in service delivery

In some cases, customers may cause failures and problems. When there is a situa-tion where customers do not accept their roles and responsibilities in a transacsitua-tion of service, there is possibly a problem occurring. In these cases communication is the best way to encourage customers to improve their behaviour. (Zeithaml et al.1990: 127-128).

When there is a gap in the execution and planning of external market operations and communication, the cure is to create a system that coordinates execution and planning of external market communication campaigns with delivery and service operators. For example, a campaign should be planned so that all parties are in-volved also in delivery and service production. This way, promises in market communication become more realistic and accurate. On the other hand, greater commitment can be achieved to what is promised in external campaigns. (Grön-roos 2000: 105)

Over-promising can only be handled by improving the planning of market com-munication using better planning procedures, but still closer management supervi-sion helps. (Grönroos 2000: 105)

Gap 5 is expected when service does not meet the perceived service. This gap can also be positive when it creates good quality or even over quality. (Grönroos 2001:152)

This gap results in lost business, a negative impact on local or corporate image, bad word of mouth, negatively confirmed quality and quality problems. The son for this gap can probably be found from one of the previously discussed rea-sons or their combinations. (Grönroos 2000: 106)

Gap model helps management to find reasons for quality problems and to find ways to minimize gaps. (Grönroos 2001:152)