Service leaders who strive for excellence want to exceed their customers' expectations. But a popular saying goes that "all extremes are bad." Will it also be so in the field of service quality? Is exceeding in quality negative, harmful? Let's see:
The quality of the service is measured as the correspondence between the client's expectations and what the client perceives after having consumed the service.
- If the quality experienced is lower than expected, we have a low quality service, if both values correspond, the quality is acceptable, that is, this should be the basis to which to aim, the least desirable. We have the situation in which the experienced quality exceeds the expected quality. This situation is what generates an enchantment of customers and is what makes the difference that will make them spontaneous promoters of the company through word of mouth communication to other potential customers. This should be the objective of the company. But what happens if the quality experienced is much higher than expected?…
This is what we call "super quality". Superquality hides a danger. We might think that "what abounds does not harm", and even more so when we talk about quality, but it is not so.
The fact is that customers, in addition to evaluating the quality of a service as such, evaluate, to their satisfaction, the cost-benefit ratio of the offer. A company that offers a “super quality” for that client will obtain a low value for this parameter, since achieving a high level of quality implies incurring higher costs in order to provide all those services included in the offer. And if those services are excessive for the client, he will only see that the cost of what he is paying is too high for the service that he is able to value, or the service that he really needs. Here is an example to clarify this concept.
Let's suppose a family house that is located in front of the police department in your neighborhood, but that has a perimeter, especially at the bottom of your land, which is quite vulnerable. That family seeks to place an alarm, since they have suffered a robbery in their absence. People have entered through the back and the police, even being in front of the house, have not learned of the fact.
The first alarm company they contacted offered them to place perimeter sensors on the entire terrain, and also motion sensors inside the house, with an interior and an exterior siren, which would point in the direction of the Police Department. In addition, a service to verify the correct operation of the equipment once a month. The installation cost would be $ 650, including a free one-year verification, and can be renewed every year for $ 100.
The second company, on the other hand, offered them similar equipment, but this included a permanent monitoring service, with connectivity to the plant and immediate notification to the police in the event of an alarm being triggered, with a guarantee of presence on the spot within the 10 minutes from activation. The installation cost is $ 500 plus a monthly payment for monitoring of $ 100.
Obviously, the monitoring service for this family is totally useless, since having the Police Department in front, it is enough to alert them with the sound of the siren. Why warn the alarm center by satellite and call them to the police, if there is a more direct and economic way to do it. The service of the second alarm company becomes "super quality" for this family. And it is precisely this additional that makes the cost in the first year of operation far exceed that of the first option, which particularly appealed to the monthly equipment verification service, which would ensure its proper functioning, which it is everything you need to prevent future crimes on your property. Note that this verification service is much less expensive than the monitoring service,but it is more successful for this particular need.
You will surely ask yourself what you can do to offer each one a high quality service, without exceeding yourself and reaching a harmful "super quality". Well, here are some points to keep in mind:
- Know your clients well, and clearly define what your target segment is, since it is easier to hit your service when you target clients with similar needs than if you want to cover everyone. Evaluate each characteristic of your service (existing or to be incorporated) based on how much value it adds to your customers. Take into account the cost that you will transfer to the price for incorporating this feature, which should be less than the value that your customers perceive for its presence. Make the service flexible. Make it adaptable to each need, being able to incorporate one service or another according to the interests of each client, and thus charge its cost only if you use it.
