Tangibles - Customer Satisfaction and Service Quality
Include the physical evidence of the service: physical facilities, appearance of personnel, tools or equipment used to provide the service, physical representations of the service, such as a plastic credit card or a bank statement and other customers in the service facility.
Operations strategy development in the service sector is of the same genre as those methods already illustrated. Firstly, measure the gaps between current achievement and market requirements. Most service strategies are customer focused and dependent on a strengths and weaknesses analysis.
The PZB (Parasuraman, Zeithaml and Berry) approach is illustrated in the figure below (Parasuraman et al, 1985). The analysis shown was drawn up after a survey consisting of 12 focus groups and in depth interviews covering four nationally recognised US services firms covering retail banking, credit cards, securities brokerage and product repair and maintenance.