Concept[edit]
The SERVQUAL service quality model was developed by a group of American authors, 'Parsu' Parasuraman, Valarie Zeithaml and Len Berry, in 1988. It highlights the main components of high quality service. The SERVQUAL authors originally identified ten elements of service quality, but in later work, these were collapsed into five factors - reliability, assurance, tangibles, empathy and responsiveness - that create the acronym RATER.
Businesses using SERVQUAL to measure and manage service quality deploy a questionnaire that measures both the customer expectations of service quality in terms of these five dimensions, and their perceptions of the service they receive. When customer expectations are greater than their perceptions of received delivery, service quality is deemed low.
In additional to being a measurement model, SERVQUAL is also a management model. The SERVQUAL authors identified five Gaps that may cause customers to experience poor service quality.