Service Marketing: M410

Mid-Term Examination

Submitted to
Md. Ridhwanul Haq, PhD
Professor
Institute of Business Administration, University of Dhaka

Submitted by
Mukarram Khan
Roll- ZR 118
Section B
IBA BBA 26th
Institute of Business Administration, University of Dhaka

Date of Submission: April 12, 2021

Name of the Case: Assessing Call Centre Quality using the SERVQUAL Model
Name of Industry: Call center Industry

Objective
Among the various tools available to us for the purpose of evaluating the quality and efficiency
of a service, the SERVEQUAL model has been deemed one of the most useful ones. For services
that are too focused on managing their service efficiency, this SERVEQUAL model helps
organizations figure out where they stand on service effectiveness and further helps
organizations troubleshoot their gaps in services. Due to the nature of this evaluation tool, there
have been numerous speculations of the portability of this evaluation method. There has been
speculation as to whether this model suits virtual organizations just as much as it suits physical
ones. I’m going to be basing my write-up today on delving through the potential this model has
even in evaluating services provided by virtual organizations.

Context
The SERVEQUAL Model
The SERVEQUAL approach to evaluating a service’s quality tends to focus on 5 factors that
contribute to the service- Tangibles, Reliability, Responsiveness, Assurance and Empathy.
Evaluating consumer perception of these 5 factors of a service enables an organization to find
gaps within service quality as related to the expectations and perceptions of the consumers of the
service. Although, there has been speculations as to the effectiveness of judging the quality of a
service based on consumer expectations and perceptions. These speculations revolve around the
fact that consumer expectations and perceptions are so varied and subjective that it becomes
difficult to assess the quality of a service based on these variables. These speculations are further
exacerbated by the fact that this model is not portable to the fields of virtual organizations.

Case Reference
The case that I’ll be referring to in explaining how the SERVEQUAL model meets a number of
limitations in trying to evaluate a virtual services organization is that of a call center. The call
center in question deals with 9000 un-bound calls a day and has about 250 Customer Service
Representatives (CSR) working for it. The CSRs are the primary and singular points of contact
for the organization to its consumers. And thus, all factors for evaluating the call center’s service
quality can be attributed to the CSRs.

Justification
This case particularly helps the SERVEQUAL approach shine in ways that it is perfect for
evaluating the service quality of a virtual organization all the while restricting the potential for
the model’s success by challenging the portability of the SERVEQUAL approach.
Methodology
The SERVEQUAL model asks 22 questions to consumers of the call center circling the 5 factors
of the SERVEQUAL model. The query towards the consumers use the following fields to justify
a comparison between consumer perceptions and expectations.
TANGIBLES
 Visual representation.
 Visual attractiveness.
 Cleanliness.
 Aesthetics.
RELIABILITY
 Kept promises.
 Interest in solving problems.
 First time success of imparted service.
 Timeliness of service.
 Infallibility.
RESPONSIVENESS
 Quickness of response.
 Vigilance.
 Availability.
ASSURANCE
 Behavior
 Safety
 Consistency in being courteous.
 Awareness.
EMPATHY
 Focus on individual service.
 Convenience.
 Attention.
 Customer’s best interests being pursued.
Consumers of the call center’s services are asked to rate these points on a 7 point Likert scale on
two occasions. Once to express their expectations from the service and once to express their
actual perceptions.
Findings
For the tangibility factor, complications are presented as to how to consider this factor into a
virtual service like a call center. For the most part, the voice of the CSR acting as the POC of the
service has the only tangible element in the service. The quality of the CSR’s voice is what the
consumers can judge and express their satisfaction or dissatisfaction towards through the Likert
Tangibility elements.

All other factors of the SERVEQUAL model can be clearly evaluated from a consumer POV just
from the CSR’s voice. A consumer can clearly express their satisfaction and dissatisfaction from
the service receive along the lines of reliability, responsiveness, assurance and empathy. The call
center can be shown clearly defined gaps within these four factors as dictated from the
consumer’s expectations and perceptions.

In conclusion, although the factors of the SERVEQUAL model do not allow us perfect flexibility
in accurately determining service quality of a virtual organization, it gives us a very good idea of
where the service stands in comparison to the golden standard.

Recommendations
 A modified version of the SERVEQUAL model could have been used to evaluate the
service of the virtual call center. Rather than accept a somewhat compromised
understanding of the tangibility factor, the model could have been modified to factor in
other variables to help better understand the quality of the service. Modifications of the
SERVEQUAL model already exist.
 Tangibles apart from the CSR’s voice could have been considered in evaluating the
Tangibility factor of the service. The quality of a call’s audio for example could have
been factored in.

References
Dalrymple, J.F. and Phipps, K. (1999) ‘Call Centres – an Innovation in Service Quality: Access
is a Quality Issue’ TQM & Innovation - Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on ISO
9000 & TQM, Hong Kong Baptist University, Hong Kong
Donnelly, M. and Dalrymple, J.F. (1996) ‘The portability and validity of the SERVQUAL scale
in measuring the quality of local public service provision’ Proceedings of the ICQ- 1996
International Conference on Quality, October 15-18, 1996 Yokohama