Gaps Model

Gaps model shows what is necessary to fulfill customer needs, or in other words, it shows the tasks that company should reach for meeting customer expectations and perceptions (Zeithaml, Bitner, & Gremler, Service Marketing Strategy, 2010). Gaps are used as a framework for better understanding what aspect of service delivery may be improved. The main goal of this model is to meet customer expectations or even exceed them, the whole model is shown on the next page – Figure 1, which illustrates the basic interaction between customer and company and highlights possible areas where the gaps may occur. If the service does not meet customer’s expectation, the customer feels dissatisfied, if he/she feels dissatisfaction, one or even more gaps occur during service delivering process.

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2.2.1 Listening gap

The first gap is listening one, which occurs when customer expectations or perceptions differ from company’s understanding of those expectations. It may arise when a company does not have enough knowledge about what its customers need. The sources of this problem may be different, for example, lack of interaction with the customers, lack of comprehension of

customers’ need or even unavailability to meet them. To avoid occurrence of listening gap management team needs to gather more accurate information about what customer wants and analyze it, whether existing service does match with customer expectations. For reaching this goal it is necessary to follow three basic strategies. The first one is about listening customers’

opinion, it may be done through different researches or simply by evaluating their

communication with the staff. The received feedback should be focused on distinguishing what exactly customer needs and when he/she feels dissatisfied and why.

The second strategy focuses on building relationships with a customer, hence the company needs to understand more about their customers, have interpersonal contact. And the last one is to reach service recovery. If the gap exists, it means that the company faces service failure and it is necessary to find a source of the failure and way out of it. It may include analyzing complaints of the customers and taking measures for reaching the customer again.

2.2.2 Design and standards gap

For avoiding another service failure, it is necessary to pay attention how customers’

expectations meet in reality during service delivery, how actual service operations follow

Figure 1 Gaps model of service failure

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customers’ will. It can be accomplished by innovative service development in designing service, which means that R&D is also important in service sphere as in manufacturing one, their job is to investigate new plans and formulas for improving service operations. Also it is necessary to create customer-defined standards, as they show what exactly customer wants and create a frame describing the service from customer’s point of view. Designing service experience’s blueprint is another way to reach it, because through understanding the whole process from customer’s prospective, the company may highlight interaction, environment and other specific elements of service delivering process, which are the main units of constructing service image. There is one more step which is important in service design which is paying attention to the tangibles, for example, equipment, facilities, even business cards, as every single detail represents the physical evidence of service delivering process.

2.2.3 Performance gap

If the company fails to deliver the service or cannot support service standards, then it faces performance gap, which is necessary to cover by checking the availability of all resources company has for delivering service. It is recommended to start with the human resources, check their motivation and capability to participate in service delivery process. Service competency and inclination are the fundamental skills that employees should have. Another aspect is the services triangle shown on Figure 2, described by Bitner and Kotler (Zeithaml, Bitner, & Gremler, Service Marketing Strategy, 2010).

Figure 2 The services marketing triangle

The triangle explains how the interaction inside the company and with the customer should be arranged and what types of marketing should be applied to succeed in service delivery.

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Service marketing addresses to the promises made and kept to the customers. External marketing refers to “making promises” process which is crucial because it helps to create customers’

expectations about what will be delivered later. Everyone who helped to communicate with the customer before service delivered is considered as a part of this process. After the promise is made, it is necessary to keep it, which adds the next step – interactive marketing, corresponding to keeping or broking the promise. This is the core of the whole triangle; if the promise is broken, the company loses the customer. The last side shows internal marketing which is responsible for delivering the service, if the employees are unable to deliver the service, then the service

delivering process collapses, as the last step has not been made. It is important to add that all key players should work in agreement with each other, otherwise, the service failure occurs.

Customers play an essential role in service delivery, they can influence on the process itself, thus the company should define the roles for the customers. It will help to avoid

misunderstanding with the customer and helps him/her to comprehend their position. The next step is effectiveness of service delivery, which can be reached by using technologies and modernization, sometimes customers can be more involved into the process if they are being educated by the company. While technologies simplify the delivering process, some other parties could be involved too – intermediaries, who help to deliver the service, however at the same time they also should be controlled by the management, hence it makes the delivering process more difficult and complicated.

2.2.4 Communication gap

When the difference between what is delivered and what has been advertised or described occurs, thus it leads to a communication gap, which ends up with the service failure.

What customer expects and what customer receives should be equal, therefore communication channels should work effectively. Even if there are several people are responsible for one customer, their answers (messages) should be the same and should not overlap each other. The second source to solve communication gap is to learn on its mistakes by analyzing all previous service failure cases and finding a solution for them, it may cause changes in future services. For avoiding losing a customer during communication process, it is necessary to build a vertical communication strategy, which makes service providers and the company itself be in touch with each other, it will help to make customer expectations and perceptions be equal and standardize the whole process.

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2.2.5 Customer gap

The customer gap which is located at the central area, shows the difference between what customer expected and received in service delivery process. Others gaps are called provider gaps, by meaning the area where the company may occur service failure. If the company does not face any problems with service delivery, therefore customer expectations will be met and the customer gap will not occur. Customer gap combines all other gaps, which are as follows:

listening gap, service design and standards gap, performance gap and communication gap. Even though one of the gaps occurs, the customer will not be satisfied and it will lead to the customer gap i.e. service gap. Therefore, the main aim of any firm is to close these gaps (service gap) or narrow them as much as possible.