Services Marketing
Assignment on customer gap and provider gap of QUBEE

Submitted by: ORCHID

Executive summary: This assignment topic is about choosing a service organization to analyze customer gap, to find the factors that causes customer gap and to give solutions to reduce or eliminate customer gap. We have chosen Qubee wireless broadband internet service provider to analyze its customer gap. Qubee provides both corporate services for offices, organizations etc. and individual customer services. But here we have considered only the individual customer services.
Customer gap: Occurs when there is difference between expected service and perceived service.
Expected service: Customer expectations are the hopes or believes about what should or will happen. The sources of expectations are price, advertising, word of mouth, physical evidence etc.
Perceived service: The actual service experience.
And the key factors that are responsible for the occurrence of this gap is the provider gaps.
The provider gaps are given below: 1. Listening gap: Not knowing what the customers expect. 2. Service design and standard gap: Not having the right service designs and standards. 3. Service performance gap: Not delivering to service standards. 4. Communication gap: Not matching performance to promise.
Company background: Qubee is the Bangladeshi customer-facing brand of Qubee Broadband, the wireless broadband business founded in 2007. It has a mission to provide "broadband for all" and seeks to bring broadband Internet services to underserved communities worldwide. And they are operating there business in Dhaka, Chittagong, Sylhet, Comilla, Bogra, Feni, Noakhali, Barisal, Chandpur, Laxmipur, Joypurhat, Naogaon, sirajgonj, Pabna and Natore.
Analysis:
Customer gap:
Expected service: In term of broadband internet services customer expect unlimited high internet speed at low price, consistent speed and 24/7 after sale service and immediate response upon occurrence of any trouble.
Perceived service: instead customers get low internet speed at high price and most of the time inconstancy in service provided by Qubee. Because now in Bangladesh we have so many broadband internet providers that are serving customers in local, region or district basis. Almost all of them provide high speed broadband services at low price than Qubee. For example: 2 mbps unlimited internet of Qubee is 5000 tk whereas link3 provides 2.5 mbps internet at 2000 tk only. And as for wireless internet people uses wi-fi router so wireless broadband provided by Qubee is not a big issue for the customers as wireless internet is so much available.
Provider gap:
Gap 1 or Listening gap: Gap between customer expectations and company perception of customer expectations. It is clearly visible from the above analysis that Qubee don’t know or have unclear perception on customer expectations.
Factors causing listening gaps and solutions: 1. Inadequate marketing research and orientation: Insufficient customer research, research not focused on service quality and inadequate use of market research. As a result they do not understand that customer want high speed with low price. 2. Lack of upward communication: Lack of interaction between management and customers, insufficient communication between contact employees and managers and too many layers between contact personnel and top management. As a result it is difficult for managers to take customer centered decisions. 3. Insufficient relationship focus: focus on new customer rather than relationship between existing customers. In this new era of marketing customers are at the center of the company customers’ expectations should be met for sustainable business and according to the 80-20 rule company must first concern about the existing customers first. 4. Inadequate service recovery: Lack of encouragement to listen to customers’ complaints, failure to make amends when things go wrong and lack of prompt recovery mechanism in place for service failure. It is very usual for services to fail. Qubee’s services also fails area wise here and then.

Solution for Gap 1: 1. A proper survey on what internet connection seekers likely to get from internet service should be conduct. 2. Now a days it is very easy to conduct survey on internet. Facebook page is a good source. 3. By questioning your existing customers you may also know what customers want from Qubee. Qubee has customer login in the Qubee website which is accessible to their current customers. They can conduct survey on existing customers’ expectations. By knowing that they might as well will have a great idea about overall market segment. 4. Qubee does give a variety of offers to their existing customers but still it is very hard for them to retain existing customers. Because it is obviously beneficial to get customers more loyal but if you don’t maintain the core demand of the customers just adding some promotional offers will not do. What is the core demand of the customers? It is consistent high speed internet at low price or competitive price that’s what customers expect first. 5. Prompt service recovery should be maintained as it takes for some silly service failure three to 1 week to recover.

Gap 2 or the service design and standard gap: Gap between customer-driven service design and standard and company perception of customer expectations.
Factors causing the service design and standard gap and solutions: 1. Poor service design: Design is basically the blueprint to get the service. In terms of Qubee it is almost same as other internet services to get. But the design for customer care should be changed. A big problem that rise at the start of every billing period is the billing problem issue. So many customers calls one after another that they cannot understand the bill that is generated or falsely generated due to some computerized error. For that reason other customer who may not have access to internet which is a more serious issue have to wait in a long queue and most of the customers get frustrated. As there is no other line to take care of the billing issue both billing and disconnection problem goes to the troubleshooting unit. And it takes a long time to make a customer understand about his bill. 2. Absence of customer driven standard: Standard is basically the service quality. A quality service cannot be delivered until customer requirements are met. Customers require reliability and responsiveness. 3. Inappropriate physical evidence and servicescape: The physical evidence that I take into consideration is the package customer receive from the Qubee. Which includes modem, package details and other accessories. But one important thing that should be provided to customers is the self-troubleshooting guide line in case of service failure. There are some simple and regular guide lines that are asked to be followed to the customers by the customer care person. And servicescape is the environment where service is performed. For Qubee the network coverage area can be considered as servicescape. There are some blank zones inside coverage area and internet speed slowdown when there is too many users under one tower. Moreover internet connection fluctuates which create continuous connected-disconnected error when user is trapped under two IP addresses.
Solution for Gap 2: 1. Billing line and the troubleshooting line should be separated. 2. Reliability and responsiveness should be well maintained. 3. Initial troubleshooting guide should be provided. 4. Network tower should be maintained well.

Gap 3 or the performance gap: Gap between customer-driven service design and standard and service delivery.
Factors causing the performance gap: 1. Deficiencies in human resource policy: Ineffective recruitment, employee turnover is very high in customer care department. Employees lack talent and expertise. As new employees are trained and positioned in customer care very frequently they lack expertise. 2. Customers not fulfilling role: most of the customers are reluctant to follow the troubleshooting guideline asked by the employees. Moreover most of the customers have very less knowledge about operating computers.

Solution for Gap 3: 1. Should recruit candidates who are more loyal. 2. Complete training should be provided to employees. 3. More on the job training is needed as so many types of customers have different issues.
Gap 4 or communication gap: Gap between service delivery and external communication to customers.
Factors causing communication gap: 1. Lack of integrated service marketing communications: Customers are less motivated to take part in interactive marketing. The rate of phone calls by customers for offers are much less than connection problems, billing problems etc. 2. Ineffective management of customer expectations: Customers’ expectations are not met as customers want low price with consistently high speed. Here “fair usage policy” is an issue. Most of the customers are unaware of this issue but at the moment they know it they dislike it instant. 3. Overpromising: Overpromising is an issue with every internet service provider. For example it is clearly written in every package detail that “up to 2 Mbps” speed. But customers consider it as actual 2 Mbps speed. 4. Inadequate horizontal communications: There is insufficient communication between customer care and onsite support provider. When a complaint is issued it take time for onsite support provider to handle and solve the problem.
Solution for gap 4: 1. Should create more interest among customers by providing valued service. Because in service marketing it is very difficult for marketers to communicate the benefit or the value of the service to the customers as service is intangible and heterogeneous. So Qubee should focus more on delivering valued service to create positive word of mouth. 2. Competitive price should be maintained. 3. A clear package detail should be given to new customers. 4. Effective and efficient communication shall be maintained between employees.