Service is an intangible concept, and what the service quality perceived by the customer is matters for businesses. Perception, in turn, contains all the concepts from the customer's satisfaction with the service received, to their tendency to recommend it to others, to their repurchasing behavior.

After purchasing the service, a customer has formed an opinion about the business. The process that begins with the stage of getting to know the business/brand continues with liking, trust, acquaintance and satisfaction with the service. After satisfaction emerges, loyalty and ambassadorship are important concepts that arise on the customer's side. Businesses that have reached this level can tend to see their customers as kindred spirits. To achieve this, businesses have to possess four important capabilities. These stages are:

1. The capability to produce the service
2. The capability to deliver the service in line with defined standards
3. The capability to deliver the service relative to competitors
4. The capability to deliver the service according to unrevealed needs

The capability to produce the service relates to the business's core competency. It should be addressed by examining the question: "does the business have the competency to produce the service?" Here the importance of the business and management functions emerges. The business must have the functions necessary to produce the service — that is, the existence of functions such as production, procurement, finance, marketing, sales and training. In addition, an organizational structure must have been established with the management functions in mind. It is indispensable that the four important functions of management — planning, organization, coordination and control — operate in the business with an understanding of total quality management and process management.

The capability to deliver service in line with standards refers to the standards defined by the business. It is the indicator of which standards all the activities that will establish the level of service quality will meet. Service standards containing all dimensions — corporate identity, shared concepts, visual perception — need to be defined. The profile of the business as seen by the customer lies at the foundation of the standards.

The capability to deliver service relative to competitors can be seen as the stage where the business makes its difference. The way there passes through doing competitor and market analysis well. The analysis of competitors engaged in producing the same product/service must be done professionally.

The capability to deliver service according to unrevealed needs is the most distinct stage of being different. It passes through being able to put forward a distinctive service on matters that have not crossed the customer's mind — that even competitors have not noticed. When businesses achieve this, they will have taken an important step on the way to becoming the most distinctive brand in their sector.

With these concepts in mind, service quality must be measurable, and once measured, the aspects open to development must be improved. Businesses that have acquired the capability to produce and to deliver service are obliged to offer their customers service in line with the standards.
Exactly at this stage, service quality improvement comes into play. The answers to three basic questions form the essence of improvement:

1. To what standards should the service be delivered?
2. What is the level of service delivery?
3. How should this service level be measured?
What matters for businesses is being able to resolve these three questions.

Author: Sait Sağlam