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Document Sample
MD850: e-Service Operations
Service Quality Management in
Electronic Services
1
Agenda
Background
Measuring & Controlling Quality
Goods Quality
Service Quality
e-Service Quality
e-Service Customer Satisfaction
e-Service Quality Measurement
e-Service Quality Management
2
Background
Motivation for Managing E-Service Quality
Customers need to be able to assess the quality of
E-Services to make informed consumption decisions
Managers also need to be able to assess quality
Quality is critical for New Economy companies to develop
ongoing relationships with customers (Hayes 2002)
High quality likely to translate into price premiums and
expanded sales (Hanson 2002)
3
Background
Quality problems are rampant among e-Services
Common examples
Abandoned shopping carts
Customer service problems
Fulfillment problems
Many possible reasons
digital content problems
website process problems
lack of website capacity
stockouts/fulfillment/delivery system problems
4
Background
Quality problems can lead to unwanted
events
For a well-known Dot.Com, can lead to a
“CNN Moment”
For lesser-known e-Service, may lead to
dissatisfaction and customers switching to
another service
5
Background
e-Service Quality Management Issues of Interest
What is e-Service quality? How is it defined?
How can I measure the quality of my services?
How can I control quality of my services?
Any methodologies available for managing e-Service
quality?
How much does quality cost in e-Services?
Is “zero-defects” a reasonable objective?
What are the costs of delivering low quality?
6
Background
e-Service Quality Management Issues of Interest
Should I measure my own quality?
Appropriate strategy for using quality measurement data?
Should I use a online customer rating vendor to measure
quality? Which one?
Are online rating vendors measuring quality correctly?
Any risks involved with using rating vendor information
to make decisions?
Any risks involved with integrating rating vendors into
my system?
7
Developing A Quality
Management Strategy
8
Developing A Quality Management
Strategy
Questions to Guide Quality Management Efforts
What are your objectives?
Customer satisfaction perception management?
Real-time - “sense and respond”
Do-It-Yourself
Time-delayed POS site experience - “analyze and adapt”
Online customer ratings services (e.g. Bizrate)
Time-delayed page experience - “analyze and adapt”
OpinionLab
9
Developing A Quality Management
Strategy
Questions to Guide Quality Management Efforts
What are your objectives?
Control of public perceptions?
Online customer ratings (e.g. Bizrate)
Voluntary participation programs
Involuntary participation
Do-It-Yourself
Detection and control of errors/defects?
OpinionLab - feedback gathered from customers via pop-up
surveys linked to each page
Watchfire (D.I.Y.) - Web spider crawls your own site, identifies
Do-It-Yourself
10
Measuring & Controlling Quality
11
Measuring & Controlling Quality
“Quality” Exhibits Many Characteristics
Objective quality vs. Perceived quality
Consumers may judge quality along both
Attribute vs. Higher level abstraction
Consumers may rate “objective” product attributes
Consumers may rate many levels of abstractions of those
“objective” product attributes
Global assessment, similar to “attitude”
an overall summary/evaluation
Judgment made within a consumer’s “evoked set”
quality evaluations depend on what the consumer knows about
other products, or depends on the set the consumer chooses to
compare a product against
12
Measuring & Controlling Quality
Attribute Level
e-Service Product Attributes
Goods
Services
Digital Content
Abstract Levels
Perceptions of e-Service Quality will be a
function of each of the above
13
Measuring & Controlling Quality
Goods Quality
Goods Quality
Measurement
Objective
actual measures (length, weight, etc.)
counts (# of errors across a space)
Perceived
perceptions of
objective dimensions
relative to … other goods/average good/prior
expectations
relative to aims for using good/prior expectations
14
rankings
Measuring & Controlling Quality
Goods Quality
Goods Quality
Management
Objective
Statistical Process Control
control charts (X-bar, R, C, U, P, etc.)
Root-cause analysis techniques
House of Quality
Perceived
House of Quality
Conjoint Analysis/Experimental Design
15
Measuring & Controlling Quality
Goods Quality
Some open questions …
How do goods affect e-Service quality?
How is quality of a good affected by e-
Services?
16
Measuring & Controlling Quality
Service Quality
Traditional Services (Person-to-Person)
Concepts
Objective
actual attributes (of facilitating goods)
“quality is having certain attributes”
some people say services cannot be measured objectively
(i.e, counted, weighed, have no objective length)
Perceived
ratings of performance
ratings of performance relative to some prior expected
rating
“Gap Model” … Quality = Performance - Expected 17
Measuring & Controlling Quality
Service Quality
Service Quality
Measurement
General Idea
psychology based
consumers (society) have evolved to some joint
understanding of N dimensions that fully define quality
researchers attempt to discover what those N
dimensions are
once researchers discover dimensions, managers can
use them to manage their services
18
Measuring & Controlling Quality
Service Quality
Service Quality
Measurement
SERVQUAL - 10 dimensions of quality originally
Tangibles
Reliability
Responsiveness
Communication
Credibility
Security
Competence
Courtesy
Understanding/Knowing Customers
Access 19
Measuring & Controlling Quality
Service Quality
Service Quality
Measurement
SERVQUAL - 5 dimensions
Tangibles
physical facilities, equipment, appearance of personnel
Reliability
ability to perform the promised service dependably and
accurately
Responsiveness
willingness to help customers and provide prompt service
Assurance
knowledge and courtesy of employees and their ability to inspire
trust and confidence
Empathy
caring, individualized attention
20
Measuring & Controlling Quality
Service Quality
Service Quality
Measurement
Examples of SERVQUAL survey questions/statements
“Their physical facilities should be visually appealing.”
“Their employees should be well dressed and appear neat.”
“Their employees don’t always have to be willing to help
customers.”
“Their employees should be polite.”
15 others
Rate these questions along a 1-7 scale
21
Measuring & Controlling Quality
e-Service Quality
Open Questions …
When/How does (person-to-person) Service
Quality affect e-Service Quality?
Is e-Service Quality different from
SERVQUAL?
Do we know all of the dimensions of e-Service
Quality?
What is the proper method for representing &
measuring e-Service Quality?
22
Measuring & Controlling Quality
e-Service Quality
Old Professors
“It’s all the same. We don’t need new quality
dimensions. We don’t need new measurement
tools.”
Young Professors
“e-Service quality is very different.”
It involves person-to-technology interactions, and
usually not the way they are dressed, whether they
smile, physical buildings, etc.
We need to publish our own papers. 23
Measuring & Controlling Quality
e-Service Quality
e-Service Quality Dimensions
Ease of Ordering
Product Selection
Product Information
Customer Support
Order Tracking
On Time Delivery
etc.
24
Measuring & Controlling Quality
e-Service System Qualities
Systemic Qualities (SUN)
User-Level Qualities
Usability
Accessibility
Service-Level Qualities
Performance “The list of systemic
Reliability qualities is potentially
Availability
Strategic-Level Qualities inexhaustible.”
Scalability
Flexibility
System-Level Qualities
Security
Manageability
Maintainability
25
Measuring & Controlling Quality
e-Service System Qualities
SunTone Quality of Service (QoS) Dimensions mentioned
Reliability System-Independent
Performance Location-Independent
Security Updatability
Consistency Flexibility
Functionality Assemble-able
Predictability
Public
Shared
Reusable
Coarse-Grained
Controllable
Manageable
26
Strategies for Managing Quality
27
Strategies for Managing Quality
1. Outsource to Online Customer Rating
Vendors
2. Use Secret Shoppers
3. Measure Quality Yourself
28
Strategy #1:
Online Customer Rating Vendors
29
Online Customer Rating Vendors
Questions to Guide Quality Management Efforts
How to manage public perceptions?
Request to be removed from ratings system?
Provide data when requested?
ex: B-schools … provide yearly updates to Business Week
Proactively work with quality rating service?
Advise of site updates
Advise of new service attributes
Actively monitor “customer feedback” sites for “trolls” who
just try to get excitement out of making controversial
statements
30
Online Customer Rating Vendors
BBB Online
Bizrate
Epinions.com
Gomez Advisors
Forrester Research
Consumer Reports
Web Watchdogs
ePublicEye
DooYoo (dooyoo.co.uk)
Keynote Systems
TRUSTe
Rating Wonders (closed 2002)
31
Online Customer Rating Vendors
What do they do?
Ratings Reporting
Collect data on service attributes
Reduce data into scores that rate a small set of
quality dimensions
Customer Comment Reporting
Customers can openly communicate their
experiences with your service
32
Online Customer Rating Vendors
Object/Event Being Measured
Transactions - consumer measurement at point of purchase
BizRate “Gold” (attributes, perceptions)
WebWatchdog (attributes, perceptions)
Transactions - expert ratings
BizRate “Silver” (attributes, ratings)
Rating Wonders (attributes, ratings)
Gomez Associates (attributes, ratings)
Page Oriented - consumer measurement on page
Opinion Lab
Content Oriented
Web Guide magazine (expert ratings)
Watchfire (Web-spider content analysis) 33
Online Customer Rating Vendors
BizRate
Perception
Overall Service Quality
Ease of Ordering
Product Selection
Attributes Product Information
Ordering Methods
Product Prices
Supported
Special Features Website Navigation and
Delivery Methods Looks
Available On-Time Delivery
Payment Methods Product Representation
Accepted
Privacy Policies
Product Shipping and
Handling
Level and Quality of
Customer Support 34
Online Customer Rating Vendors
RatingWonders
Ratings
Overall Rating
Attributes
Products
Product attributes
Service
Service attributes
Site Quality
Site Quality attributes
Features
Feature attributes
Ordering
Ordering attributes
Payment
Payment attributes
Shipping
Shipping attributes
Returns
Return attributes
35
Online Customer Rating Vendors
Object/Event Being Measured
Content Oriented
Web Guide magazine (expert ratings)
Watchfire (Web-spider content analysis)
Apple’s iReview (Mac-friendly expert ratings)
Consumer Comments
Gomez
Epinions
TRUSTe
Web Watchdog
36
Online Customer Rating Vendors
Some Characteristics of Online Rating Vendors
Positioned as Omniscient Quality/Satisfaction Gurus
Aggregators of information about websites’ services
B2B Marketing Researcher/Expert Service business model
B2B Subscription business model
Affiliate-oriented … want a piece of each transaction
Affiliate business model
Infomediary/Recommender business model
Advertising oriented
Advertising business model
Border on e-Retailing
Merchant business model
37
Online Customer Rating Vendors
Questions to Guide Quality Management Efforts
What is the real long-term business model of your
service-quality measurement vendor?
Service Quality measurement, analysis, reporting?
Transaction fees from referrals?
Vendor might outsource their measurement
Vendor might discontinue their measurement program,
and use someone else’s
Data vending?
Privacy issues? How much data do you want your SQ
measurement company to have about your customers?
Retailing? 38
Vendor might discontinue their measurement program
Strategy #2:
Secret Shoppers
39
Secret Shoppers
“Secret Shopper” or “Mystery Shopper”
Common strategy in traditional services
E.g., someone paid by restaurant to eat and report
on service experiences
Common strategy of the press
“We visited 10 sites and ordered products at each.
Here are our findings.”
Suggested in e-Service
Try out your own service
If you don’t like the results, your customer
probably won’t either 40
Secret Shoppers
e-Service “Secret Shopper” Tasks
Determine your (and competitors’) easy-to-do-
business-with quotient
Test your customer service rep empowerment level
Try out the experience on your site
Learn something new from an e-Service, and envision
how it would be useful on yours
Check how easy it is to make contact with a human
representative
Monitor a purchase end-to-end from order to delivery
Examine your service recovery activities
etc.
41
Strategy #3:
e-Service Quality Measurement
42
e-Service Quality Measurement
Why measure e-Service Quality yourself (and develop
your own set of quality measures)?
Many service quality models were inductively derived from
customer comments about those services
Problem with this?
A number of IS researchers suggest that humans tend not to be
able to fully understand the complexity of modern
IT-based service systems
Systems can only be correctly understood through modeling the
systems themselves (Scott 2001)
Growing opinion of researchers in E-Service Quality
Future service quality research for services involving information
technologies should be based on the actual attributes of such
services (Carr 2002)
43
e-Service Quality Measurement
Questions to Guide Quality Management Efforts
Do you want to measure quality of a “sub-system” of
your e-Service process?
Do you have a model (service-blueprint) of the e-Service
system (of the “service-product” or “service-process”)?
D.I.Y.
Define your own satisfaction dimensions and
measure(s) for that sub-system
Directly measure consumer as they are using that
sub-system
Do you want to measure quality of individual pages?
OpinionLab
44
e-Service Quality Measurement
Levels of measurement
Objective Measure
Service attributes
“Has shopping cart”
“Allows customers to pay by VISA credit card”
Errors/Defects in system
“Page not available when visited”, “Dead Link”
Abstract/Subjective Measure
Customer satisfaction perceptions
Expert ratings of customer satisfaction
Customer comments - written 45
e-Service Quality Measurement
Objective Measures
Possible to use statistical process control (SPC)
tools
Repetitive activities within your site (or delivery
processes beyond it) can be studied and controlled
Frequency across some space
Errors across a page
Failures within a week
Delivery problems during a month
46
e-Service Quality Measurement
Abstract/Subjective Measures
Single item questions
“How would you rate the On Time Delivery quality of your
experience? (1=horrible, 10=fantastic)”
Multiple item scales
Ex: Reliability (Source: Gefen 2002) [Rating from 1 to 7]
“When Amazon.com promises to do something by a certain
time, it does so.”
“When users have a problem, Amazon.com shows a sincere
interest in solving it.”
“Amazon.com is dependable.”
“Amazon.com provides its services at the time it promises to do
so.”
47
e-Service Quality Measurement
Which e-Service Quality dimensions to
use?
Assuming that you’ve identified all possible
quality dimensions …
Card sorting method for choosing a relevant
subset of dimensions (Upchurch, et al. 2001)
Extended Web Assessment Method rating method
for choosing most relevant subset of dimensions
(Schubert 2003)
48
e-Service Quality Measurement
How to measure customer experiences using
surveys?
Approaches
“Pop-up” surveys used to gather customer
feedback
Post-checkout survey pages
Survey process
Build it into your website/e-Service
Outsource it to a measurement service
49
Processes for e-Service Quality
Management
50
Quality Management Processes
1. Vision/Benchmarking/Secret Shopper
e-Service book
2. Continuous Improvement
3. Build quality into your architecture
SunTone 3DF
4. Derive your quality measures from your e-
service system blueprints
Field, Heim & Sinha (2002)
51
Quality Management Processes
e-Service Book
e-Service Book
Ask the “Academy Award question”
Get the customer to specify their vision of their real needs
and what the possible future e-Services would be like to
fulfill those needs
Captures future quality expectations
Experience your e-Service and then experience
competitor e-Services
Test the extent of performance in the e-Service
Actively rate each
Compare your performance to other e-Services to find out
what you are doing well and not so well
52
Quality Management Processes
Continuous Improvement
Continuous Improvement
“Plan-Do-Check-Act” cycle
Continuously measure
and collect data
Implement
changes Interpret
results
Identify improvement Perform root-cause
opportunties analysis
53
Quality Management Processes
Continuous Improvement
Continuous Improvement
Quality Tools
SPC Charts – for repetitive processes
Check sheets
Pareto charts
Cause and effect diagrams
54
Quality Management Processes
Statistical Approaches
Use some variant of regression analysis to study
the relationship between
service attributes
service quality
service outcomes – customer loyalty, repurchase,
customer switching
Regression techniques often used
Probit
Tobit
Logit
55
Quality Management Processes
SunTone Methodology
Symptoms of Bad e-Service Quality Found
Throughout Development Life-Cycle
Management
Requirements
Development
Deployment
Use
Operations
Maintenance
56
Quality Management Processes
SunTone Methodology
Drivers of Good e-Service Quality (p. 69-70)
Based on well-defined, public interfaces
Can be shared and reused by other services, end
users, and network service developers
Easily controllable and manageable
Can be brokered, billed, administered, monitored,
advertised, or syndicated
System and location independent
Can be assembled and reassembled to create new
services
Composed of object-oriented, easily distributable
pieces of code
Deliver predictable quality of service (QoS) levels 57
Quality Management Processes
SunTone Methodology
SunTone Methodology
Builds quality dimensions into the system
during architecting of the system
Layers + Tiers + Systemic Qualities
Systemic qualities drive the choices for
architecting the Layers and Tiers
58
Quality Management Processes
SunTone Methodology
SunTone
“3DF”
Securability
Performance
Reliability
Availability
Application
Upper Platform
Lower Platform
Hardware
59
Quality Management Processes
SunTone Methodology
Line Item
Order
Customer Catalog
Segment Product
HTML JSP EJB JMS APPC
Netscape iWS iAS MQSeries CICS
Windows Solaris Solaris Solaris MVS
PC E450 E5500 E250 ES9000
60
Quality Management Processes
SunTone Methodology
Formalizes the 3D Approach
Based on the industry standard Rational
Unified Process (RUP)
Driven by Use Cases
Iterative and Incremental
Architecture-Centric
Extends RUP
Patterns Based
Systemic Quality Driven (i.e., Emphasizes QoS)
61
Quality Management Processes
SunTone Methodology
Functional Service Level
Inception
Requirements Requirements
Elaboration
Functional Structural Validate Structural
Design Design Prototype
Refine
Functional Structural Specifications
Specifications
Construction
Code
Production
62
Quality Management Processes
Field, Heim & Sinha (2002) Methodology
Field, Heim and Sinha (2002)
Generate Use Case diagrams and other UML diagrams
of e-Service design
Extend diagrams to incorporate service flows within
the e-Service
Link quality dimensions to the entities and flows
within the diagrams
Create a strategy for measuring quality dimensions that
relate to important entities/flows within the e-Service
63
Quality Management Processes
Field, Heim & Sinha (2002) Methodology
E-Service Modeling with
Unified Modeling Language
Example of humans
interacting with service
systems
How humans will use the
system?
64
Quality Management Processes
Field, Heim & Sinha (2002) Methodology
The Approach
Utilize existing models of E-Service process (in
UML)
Translate UML model into a process model of
E-Service that identifies entities and service
transactions
Link quality to process model
Map dimensions from extant quality models onto the
structure of an E-Service system
Use process model to identify relevant new quality
dimensions
Use process model and quality set to manage
E-Service system
65
Quality Management Processes
Field, Heim & Sinha (2002) Methodology
A Process Model of an
E-Service
Entities
Service transactions
Physical product flows
66
Quality Management Processes
Field, Heim & Sinha (2002) Methodology
Linking Quality Dimensions to the E-Service System
67
Quality Management Processes
Field, Heim & Sinha (2002) Methodology
Applying the Process Model
Focusing on defining quality dimensions for an
E-Service system component
Identify system component of interest to manage
Use table to identify quality dimensions driven by that
component
Insights
Suggests which levers (i.e., system component/quality
dimension pair) are available for managing and improving
quality
Provides a diagnostic tool for identifying quality problems
68
Quality Management Processes
Field, Heim & Sinha (2002) Methodology
Applying the Process Model
Focusing on a Quality Dimension
Interest is in managing/improving a specific quality dimension
Map from quality dimension, into appropriate set of system
components identifiable as driving that dimension
Ex: “Ease of Ordering” is affected by
6 service system entities + 4 service transactions
Insights
Extant quality approaches (e.g. SERVQUAL) use a single
summary judgment … perceptions, but no operational lever
Our approach
Can inform about overall satisfaction
Provides operational lever(s) for improving the service
69
Summary
Several quality measurement techniques currently
employed
Survey of quality management strategies and
methodologies
70
