Delivering Excellent Service - Evaluation of Service Excellence Models

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Delivering Excellent Service:

Evaluation of Service Excellence Models

Matthias Gouthier1, Walter Ganz2, Andreas Giese3, Christopher Bartl4

134 EBS Business School,

2 Fraunhofer IAO

In today's competitive business environment, it is no longer sufficient to

merely satisfy customers. To remain or become quality leaders, service

companies have to delight customers instead. High quality services and

delight are the goals of service excellence.

This paper focuses on expanding and extending what companies can do

to achieve service excellence. The authors compare three of the most

commonly used excellence models in Europe, their applicability and their

perspective on service excellence. Since the models are both compatible

and complementary with each other, the analysis presented in the paper

provides an enhanced understanding of service excellence.

1. Introduction

Due to the unceasing globalisation process of services, service industries and corporations

world-wide have an increased need to secure their competitive position and

establish long-term customer relationships (Thoumrungroje; Tansuhaj, 2007). Moreover,

as customer needs and expectations continue to expand and as service offerings

differ from each other only marginally, organisations must concentrate their efforts

on finding innovative solutions which enhance customer satisfaction and loyalty

(Chandrashekaran et al., 2007; Yieh et al., 2007).

Therefore, providing better core services or value-added services has emerged as a

critical success factor. The emotional impact of services can be significant, due to

their impact on customer repurchase intentions and satisfaction (Mittal; Kamakura,

2001). Consequently, both service companies and researchers have shifted their focus

towards finding ways how to transform service quality to the next higher level.

Stimulated by the discussion within both practice and service research, the concepts

of service excellence and customer delight have emerged as viable opportunities.

Service excellence occurs when customers perceive a service to have exceeded

their previous expectations of the respective service (Horwitz; Neville, 1996). Oliver,

Rust and Varki. (1997) elucidate that such a surprising experience initiates arousal,

which subsequently results in pleasure, which eventually will lead to customer delight,

a higher level of satisfaction. Delight as an emotional response is capable of

strengthening a customer's commitment to a service provider and hence will, for instance,

result in increased and persistent levels of loyalty and repurchase intention

(Oliver et al., 1997; Schneider; Bowen, 1999). In accordance with the aforementioned

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view on service excellence, the authors perceive service excellence as a company's

capability to deliver such a high level of service quality that subsequent customer delight

will result from it. Therefore, service excellence can be considered to be an essential

antecedent of customer delight.

While there is already a considerable body of research on customer satisfaction and

quality management, there is less information available on service excellence and

the relevant drivers of customer delight (Johnston, 2004). Existing models on service

excellence are generally only applied separately in isolation, without realising any of

the potential benefits or synergies of combined approaches.

Given the significance of providing excellent services in today's competitive business

environment, we contribute to closing this service excellence research gap by providing

a better understanding of the alternatives available to organisations in ensuring

service excellence.

To achieve our aim, we conceptually compare three of the most commonly used excellence

models in Europe and their applicability, as well as their perspective on service

excellence. Because this research focuses on the most widespread models,

Johnston's conceptualisation of service excellence (2004; 2007), the European

Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM) (EFQM, 2000; EFQM, 2010) model and

Kano's model to understand customer requirements and their impact on customer

satisfaction (Kano et al., 1984) were chosen. Johnston analyses service excellence

from both the customer and manager perspective, making recommendations in terms

of what companies can do to generate this excellence. The EFQM model, the most

common one for ensuring business excellence within the European Union, enables

researchers and practitioners to evaluate a company's competitive position. Kano's

model introduces customer satisfaction