Service Quality

1. Why is quality a difficult term to define? How can we improve our understanding of quality? As we can see quality is difficult term to define because quality is not an attribute of the object or product, it is a perception that relates a person observing or using a product to that product. Hence, quality is not absolute, but relative. In the lifecycle of a product, quality might be different along the stages. A new product could be a quality product if it is chock full of bells and whistles, while later in life dependability and reliability are perhaps a better description of what is quality. This makes quality hard to define.
In general, an improvement in service design and delivery helps achieve higher levels of service quality. For example, in service design, changes can be brought about in the design of service products and facilities. On the other hand, in service delivery, changes can be brought about in the service delivery processes, the environment in which the service delivery takes place and improvements in the interaction processes between customers and service providers.
Various techniques can be used to make changes such as quality function deployment QFD, failsafing moving the line of visibility and the line of accessibility and blueprinting.
Another Approach to improve the conformity of service quality to ensure and increase the 'conformance quality' of services, that is, service delivery happening as designed, various methods are available. Some of these include Guaranteeing Mystery shopping; recovering; Setting standards and measuring; Statistical process control and Customer