How Mystery Audits Can Help You Bridge the Service Gaps Effectively?

Bridging gap in service industry

Who doesn’t want customers making repetitive purchases and thereby increasing their brands’ revenues? Well, a loyal customer-base is what every business, brand or company wants. And, in order to get there, companies bring into play 5 major service quality (Servqual – dimensions) on the basis of which most of the customers determine the quality of services offered to them. Let’s take a quick look at what those service quality dimensions are all about –

 Assurance – Are your employees courteous and knowledgeable? Are they skilled enough to convey trust and instill confidence about your brand in your customers? Remember, a customer gets to interact with your employees in the first place. And, if the former is not comfortable with the latter, recurring purchases might not take place.

 Tangibility - Services are very much tangible and most customers get their perception on the quality of services provided by you by comparing the tangible aspects related to these services. Simply put, tangibles are the physical appearance of the facilities, communication materials, personnel and equipment. It helps in creating an unforgettable firsthand experience.

Empathy – It’s the way you care about the customers and provide individualized and tailor-made solutions to their needs. In this cut-throat competitive world, the needs of the customers are rising and being a customer-friendly company, it is your duty to meet their individual demands. If you fail to provide your customers with individualized attention, they will look for it elsewhere.

Reliability – It’s the ability to live up to the promises made by a company to the customers in a given situation. This service quality dimension is very crucial when it comes to making a good impression on customers. Every customer wants its service provider to be reliable.

Responsiveness – It’s the readiness to help customers with their needs and providing them with prompt services. A customer always feels valued if he or she gets attention and best possible customer service.

The following situation at a premium automobile dealership will make things clearer to you –

When you visit the dealership of a premium automobile brand –

“How an employee or the sales consultant attending you is trying to build trust between you and the brand or whether he or she is skilled enough to demonstrate trust, is the ‘Assurance’.

‘Tangibility’ is when you find that the physical appearance of the dealership is in line with the brand’s standards, luxury-wise and cleanliness-wise.

When you visited the dealership, the sales consultant did a need analysis and then suggested tailor-made solutions to you, both in terms of the model of the car as well as offer and negotiation. This was ‘Empathy’.

‘Reliability’ is when the sales consultant talks good things about the brand, the model you intend to buy, history of the brand, etc. in order to establish reliability between you and the brand.

When you visited the dealership, the sales consultant and other staff members were proactive in their approach and promised prompt services if you need to call them or need roadside assistance. So, this was ‘Responsiveness’.”

Finding the loopholes is crucial

All of these 5 servqual dimensions show how your customers perceive you and the quality of services offered by you. And, it’s the time of delivering these services when the gap actually forms, the service gaps. Your services and your approach might be absolutely alright, but, it might be 'someone' selling at the point of sale (POS) who is responsible for correlating issues between the brand and its customers. And, it is very important to find this out, find the loophole in services.

When it comes to measuring service quality, some of the most integral aspects associated with it are - customer perception, expectation, satisfaction and attitude. And, different customers have different expectations from a service provider that vary widely on the basis of customer preferences. Therefore, you need have a clear understanding of what your customers expect from you in order to comprehend as well as manage them. Otherwise, there would be a service quality gap between what customers expect and what is being delivered to them.

Mystery shopping helps fill the service gaps.

According to the most popular Service Gap Model, the following types of gaps exist that can break your brand just like that. Those are -

• The customer gap – It’s the gap between expected services and perceived services. Through understanding the management goals and customer goals, the SOPs set by management to offer best customer experience can be measured whether the same is being implemented well by conducting Mystery checks.

•  The knowledge gap – It’s the gap between customer expectation and management perception. This can be captured through connecting feedback results and mystery shopping results to bring an inline view towards the brand.

• The policy gap – It’s the gap between Management perception and specified service quality which can be checked through Mystery checks.

• The delivery gap - It’s the gap between specified service quality and service delivery which can be assessed through such encounters of Mystery checks.

• The communication gap – It’s the gap between service delivery and communications (external) which can also be keenly assessed to an extent through Mystery checks but an ideal deal would be to conduct a perception study.

The bottom line is - the more the service gaps, the more you tend to lose out on your customers. This is where you need mystery shopping to bridge the service gaps in the most effective manner.