UNDERSTANDING WORKPLACE CULTURE: CUSTOMERS EXPECTATIONS AND SERVICE QUALITY

Introduction

Workplace culture basically is the feel of a workplace, the way things are done, and the way people communicate and work. It is essentially the psychology of an organisation, a set of goals, beliefs, structures and behaviours. In this regard, an organisation can be compared to a person. One person can be smart, innovative and quick to adopt technology while another person can be secure, steady, reliable and consistent. Culture is created by the interaction of leadership and employees.

Truly, a lot of effort is invested in many organisations to create a culture that helps the organisation better achieve its goals and business plans. This is because an organisation’s culture can be positive or negative. For example, one organisation might feel that through support, teamwork and sharing of ideas they can foster innovation that would help them bring new and exciting products to the market, while another may encourage achievement and competition by focusing on success of their consultants to attract motivated staff who can in turn help capture more market share.

However, whatever the idea an organisation may have, the culture is the environment or habitat in which employees operate. This environment powerfully shapes employees’ feelings, experiences, opinions, the connection with their organisation and their interaction with their colleagues. Some elements of culture are immediately apparent while others become more apparent over time.

On the other hand, service quality is becoming an increasingly vital concern to organisations in the 21st century. As competition stiffens, with an increasing number of firms or institutions offering similar products and services, many firms are discovering that the key to survival and progress lies in providing high-quality service.

What is Quality Service?

Quality service has become one of the key research topics that most researchers are focusing on to determine what organisations can do to improve the quality of service they provide. This means, many organisations are discovering that they must look at service from the customer’s perspective. By viewing service quality from customer’s perspective, organisations can find ways of boosting customer satisfaction with their services and thereby gaining competitive advantage.

On the other hand, to distinguish quality service from the customer’s perspective, it is necessary to know first of all, customers’ expectation and how their perception of the quality of service delivered differs from their expectation. Hence, issues of customer service very often focus on external customers. Thus, all the principles of service quality equally apply to internal customers who are staff of the organisation.
Who is a Customer?

A “customer” can be defined as a person, client or a business that uses the services or products of a provider. Whoever receives your work is engaged in a service delivery with you in which you are the service provider and he/she is your customer. By this definition customers can be categorised into two types, namely “internal customers” and “external customers.”

Accordingly, staff of an organisation can be considered “internal customers” because they receive products and services essential to their work from fellow workers. When co-workers do not provide the needed support services, work process in the organisation can be adversely affected. The issue of internal customers is sometimes downplayed to the detriment of general customer service of an organisation. In other words, the concept of customer satisfaction must be applied to internal customers if organisations are to satisfy external customers.

“External customers” refer to persons who receive the services provided by the organisation and who are not members or staff. Customers are usually used interchangeably to mean users of services or products.

Customer Expectations

Customer expectation refers to the standard of service or products that a customer expects from a service provider. Customer expectation varies from one customer to the other even for the same service organisation. For instance, a customer who visits the premises of a customer focus Bank may have several customer service expectations, a customer-friendly banking hall, simple, fast and efficient process for cheque encashment and a responsive staff; a departmental manager may expect the secretary to process a number of corporate letters a day; the accounts officer may expect his supervisor to complete the trial balance of operations before the end of the day’s operations; etc. A customer’s perception of service quality is the comparison of his expectation and the experience (performance) of the service. All progressive service providers, whether individuals or institutions, aim at service quality and continually work toward improving that service standard.

Factors of Customer Expectations

Customers’ expectations are influenced by a number of factors such as:

Customer needs: customers have needs that have to be met by service providers. The needs differ from one customer to the other. The special need of the customer influences his/her expectation.

Word of mouth communication: This refers to what others have said about the service provider. It may be positive or negative. Whatever the case is, the type of information others have passed around concerning the service provider and the type of service it provides has an effect on the customer’s expectation.

Customer’s past experience: If the customer is not a new customer, his/her past experience of the service offered by the company or individual will influence his expectation of service.
Suppliers’ communications to customers: The type of message a service provider, whether an individual or organisation, has passed on to the customers will have an effect on their expectation. The communication may be through service brochures, operational documents or through the media advertisement. If a person advertises his capacity to deliver within a specific time, a customer will expect same delivery quality when he/she calls.

Customer Expectation and Satisfaction

Customers’ satisfaction reflects the gap between the customer’s expectation and the experience of the service from the customers’ point of view. The wider the gap the less satisfied the customer will be. It is prudent therefore as organisations to work to continually improve customer service delivery as a means of narrowing this gap to enhance customer satisfaction.

Customer satisfaction has several competitive advantages such as:

• Repeat buying (repeat using the services and personal development) • Higher prices (remuneration) • Loyalty in time of crisis • Word of mouth communication about institutional or individual capacity • ‘One stop shopping’ and • New product innovation

Seemingly, as customer expectations increase over time, service quality has to keep on improving to maintain or increase the level of customer satisfaction which is very essential for growth of any business or organisation.

Determinants of Service Quality

Researchers from different schools of thought have identified five factors that are very important to customers’ perception of service quality. However, if an organisation or an individual is to gain competitive advantage through improved service, it is important to clearly recognize the following five-service quality factors and then work to enhance them:

Reliability: refers to the ability of the service provider to perform the promised service dependably and accurately. This involves consistency of performance and performing the service right the first time. This means “Can the customer depend on the service provider to deliver the promised products and services?”

Assurance: This means the knowledge and courtesy of employees and their ability to elicit trust and confidence. This means the organisation is characterized by people who know their products and services, the internal workings of the company, and the nature of their customers.

Tangibles: Examples are the physical facilities, equipment and the appearance of the personnel.

Empathy: This means the caring, individualised attention that the company provides to its customers. An organisation demonstrates empathy through its employees who not only know the needs of customers and show it, but also provide individualised attention to customers.

Responsiveness: This factor is the willingness and readiness of personnel to help customers and provide prompt service.

Conclusion

The concept of customer expectation, customer service and customer satisfaction equally apply to all organisations whether public or private. Customer expectation and satisfaction are the mindset, an attitude, a value framework for the way we work. It does not matter whether those we serve are inside or outside the organisation, the idea remains the same.

Again, how we perceive our work environment determines how we work. If our work environment is callous, insensitive, unresponsive and apparently uncaring, we will invariably adopt similar attitudes and values. These values and attitudes will become part of the culture, part of the way people work.

Finally, service orientation does not actually begin at the point where the organisation interacts with its external customers. It is created by the behaviours within the organisation and embedded in the culture, through leadership that models what the organisation expects, requires and values. However, it is simply not possible to create sustained external customer satisfaction through an internal environment that is not dedicated to the same ethical values espoused by the organisation.

AUTHOR

Doris Aryee
Executive Secretary to the Dean
Pentecost University College - Graduate School