GAP 4: WHEN PROMISES DO NOT MATCH DELIVERY

We propose that the fourth major cause of low service-quality perceptions is the gap between what a firm promises about a service and what it actually delivery.
Accurate and appropriate company communication-advertising, personal selling, and public relations that do not overpromise or misrepresent-is essential to delivering services that customers perceive as high in quality.
Discrepancies between service delivery and external communications, in the form of exaggerated promises and/ or the absence of information about service delivery aspects intended to serve customers well, can powerfully affect consumers’ perceptions of service quality.
GAP 4 PROBLEM: INADEQUATE HORIZONTAL COMMUNICATIONS
Communications between different functional areas in the firm, such as marketing and operations, are necessary to archive the common goals of organization. In situations where communication across functions, or horizontal communication channels are not open, perceived service quality is in jeopardy.
Not all organizations advertise, but all need coordination or integration across departments to be able to delivery quality service. Salespeople and operations employees in many companies are often in conflict, each function believing that the other makes work difficult. Operations employees feel that salespeople constantly promise more than they can deliver-usually more quickly than they can deliver-to get or maintain the business.
CLOSING GAP 4: OPENING CHANNELS OF COMMUNICATION BETWEEN ADVERTISING AND OPERATIONS
When a company creates advertising that depicts the service encounter, it is essential that the advertising accurately reflect what customers experience in actual service encounters. Puffery or exaggeration service-quality perceptions at risk, especially when the firm is consistently unable to deliver to the level of service portrayed in advertising. Featuring actual employees doing their jobs or explaining their service in advertising is one way to coordinate advertising portrayals and the reality of the service encounter.
In featuring employees, the advertising department must interact directly with service providers. Therefore, the communication and coordination needed to create the advertising helps close the gap between external communications and delivery.
CLOSING GAP 4: OPENING CHANNELS OF COMMUNICATIONS BETWEEN SALES AND OPERATIONS
Involving the operations staff in face-to-face meeting with external customers is a strategy that allows operations to more readily understand the salesperson’s role and the needs and desires of customers.
CLOSING GAP 4: OPENING CHANNELS OF COMMUNICATION BETWEEN HUMAN RESOURCES, MARKETING, AND OPERATIONS
Because employees are internal customers of the human resource department, the service they receive strongly affects the way they serve external customers. One effective strategy for opening these channels is a staff position that formally links human resources and operations.
GAP 4 PROBLEM: DIFFERENCES IN POLICIES AND PROCEDURES ACROSS BRANCHES OR DEPARTMENTS
Another form of coordination central to providing service quality is consistency in policies and procedures across departments and branches. If a service organization operates many outlets under the same name, whether franchised or company-owned, customers expect similar performance across those outlets.
Lack of consistency across outlets explains a large part of the financial and operational difficulties experienced by Jiffy Lube International, Inc., the Baltimore-based franchisor of quick-lube auto centers.
CLOSING GAP 4: PROVIDING CONSISTENT SERVICE ACROSS BRANCHES OR OUTLETS
If customers are to receive consistent service across branches or field units of a firm, a company must develop a mechanism for ensuring uniformity. A firm may also choose other ways to obtain consistency, perhaps by setting standards or goals for service-quality outcomes that are visible to customers, but allowing the outlets to use their own process to achieve these goals.
GAP 4 PROBLEM: PROPENSITY TO OVERPROMISE
Because of increasing deregulation and intensifying competition in the service sector, many service firm feel more pressure than ever before to acquire new businesses and to meet or beat competition.
CLOSING GAP 4: DEVELOPING APPROPRIATE AND EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATIONS ABOUT SERVICE QUALITY
To be appropriate and effective, communications about service quality must
(1) deal with the quality dimensions and features that are most important to customers; (2) accurately reflect what customers actually receive in the service encounter; and (3) help customers understand their roles in performing the service.
Emphasize Primary Quality Determinants
Communicating service quality begins with an understanding of the aspects of service quality that are most important to customers. Isolating quality dimensions must important to customers provides a focus for advertising efforts.
Managing Customers’ Expectations
A major premise of our research has been that consumers’ perceptions of service quality can be influenced either by raising consumers’ perceptions or by lowering expectations. Managing Customers’ expectations, especially those created by the company itself through external communications and price, is an essential part of a strategy to attain perceived quality service.
Another way to manage expectations is to describe the service delivery process and provide the customer a choice of quicker, lower-quality provision versus slower, higher-quality provision.
The Customer’s Role In Service Delivery
Sometimes service problems and failures are caused by customers. Business customers of the postal service frequent put wrong or outdated address and zip codes on envelopes. Patients neglect to tell their doctors about unhealthy habits that lead to their medical problems.
EMPIRICAL FINDINGS ABOUT GAP 4
We investigated the size of Gap 4 and the impact of the two factors described in this chapter in five major U.S service companies. As described in chapter 4, we measured managers’ and contact personnel’s perceptions of the extent of Gap 4 and the factors likely to influence it in service companies. These companies would be well advised to manage customers’ expectations in ways suggested in this chapter to close Gap 4.
PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER: THE EXTENDED GAPS MODEL
In this extended model, as in the basic gaps model, the gap between customers’ expectations and perceptions of service quality (Gap 5) results from the four gaps on the organization’s side of the model. We developed the extended gaps model as a framework for understanding and researching service quality in organizations.
The use of this model for research can help a company answer critical questions about service quality such as the following:
1. Which of the four service-quality gaps is (are) most critical in explaining service-quality variation?
2. What are the main organizational factors responsible for the size of each of the four service-quality gaps?
SUMMARY
Discrepancies between service delivery and external communications have a strong impact on customers’ perceptions of service quality. In this chapter, we discussed the factors affecting the size of Gap 4, the gap between promises and delivery. These factors, illustrated in exhibit 7-1, included: (1) inadequate horizontal communication among operations, marketing, and human resources, as well as across branches; and (2) propensity to overpromise in communications. We defined these factors, described the problem they create in organizations, and offered suggestions for dealing with them to close Gap 4. Finally, we presented empirical finding from our research about Gap 4 and introduced the extended gaps model that integrates all of our research on service quality.