What influences expectations and perceptions?

5.3

Since the degree of satisfaction, or dissatisfaction, is the result of customers’ perceptions com-pared to their expectations, it is appropriate to spend a little time defi ning expectations and perceptions and explaining how they come about.

5.3.1 Perceptions

Our perceptions are our own personal impression and interpretation of the service provided and so customers will perceive each service in their own personal, emotional and sometimes irrational way. We use our senses, vision, smell, touch, taste and hearing, to experience the world around us and the services we receive. How we perceive a service (and all other events) depends upon the experiences each of us have had in our past, our culture, language, beliefs, values, interests and assumptions. ⁷ The artist David Hockney said about art, ‘We see with memory, which is why none of us sees the same thing, even if we’re looking at the same thing.’

‘Reality’ is not always real. For example, much has been written about the placebo effect, where reassurances, or incantations, from a doctor (or other ‘professional’), with or without a pill with no medicinal properties (or a professional’s report), has a signifi cant effect on most people’s psychological and also physical well-being. ⁸

A service received is what we each, individually, perceive it to be. For example, if a customer has had a privileged background and is used to being looked after, their experience of a high-class restaurant may well be quite different to someone from a more humble background (or a different country). While the privileged person may experience and perceive attentive staff and appreciate well-laid tables, the other person may fi nd the staff obsequious and overbear-ing, and the number of knives and forks confusoverbear-ing, even anxiety-making.

In service (and indeed in business and life situations) we may fi lter our experiences even more:

● Selective fi ltering . We tend to only notice what is relevant to current needs and ‘ignore’

other parts of the experience. The ‘privileged’ person may notice a mark on the tablecloth and complain, the other person may not even notice it.

● Selective distortion . We tend to modify and seek information that supports personal beliefs and prejudices. The European visiting an American restaurant may well notice the size of the portions being served, confi rming their personal prejudices about Americans.

● Selective retention . We tend to remember only those things that are relevant to our needs and beliefs. After a restaurant meal, some diners may remember and talk about the quality of the food, others the state of the toilets and others the attentive, or good looking, staff.

5.3.2 Expectations

Our expectations of a service will lie somewhere on a range, or continuum, between ideal and intolerable (see Figure 5.4 ). An intolerable train journey may be one that arrives very late, or even not at all, where the carriages are fi lthy and the staff abusive. An ideal train journey might be clean, on time, very fast, and include chauffeur-driven transport at either end.

Some points on this continuum could be defi ned as follows: ⁹

● Ideal . The best possible.

● Ideal feasible . The level of service that a customer believes should be provided given the price or the industry standard.

● Desirable . The standard that the customer wants to receive.

● Deserved . The level of performance that the customer ought to receive, given the perceived costs.

● Minimum tolerable . The minimum tolerable standards – those that must be achieved.

● Intolerable . The standards the customers should not receive.

An important point here is that we should be careful when asking customers about their

‘ expectations’. The following questions, for example, would each provoke a different response as they refer to different points on the scale:

● What would you like?

● What should be provided?

● What would be acceptable?

Our expectations, defi ned as what we believe to be likely, i.e. what we believe will happen, rather than should happen, may not be a single point on this scale but a range (see Figure 5.4 ).

This range, or zone, of expectations, as shown in Figure 5.4 , is sometimes referred to as the zone of tolerance. This zone of what could be considered to be an ‘acceptable’ level of service by a customer is shown in Figure 5.5 . The importance of this zone of tolerance is that customers may accept variation within a range of performance and any increase or decrease in perform-ance within this area will only have a marginal effect on perceptions. ¹⁰ Only when performance moves outside of this range will it have any real effect on perceived service quality.

Figure 5.4

Ideal

Intolerable

Expectations = what we believe

to be likely

Figure 5.5

Ideal

Intolerable More than

acceptable

Acceptable

Unacceptable

Expectations

It has been suggested that the width of this zone of tolerance is inversely proportional to the customer’s level of involvement and commitment. ¹¹ This involvement refers to a customer’s level of interest in a service, the importance they attach to it, and their emotional commitment to the service. ¹² For example, students who are highly engaged, committed to, and paying for, a particular programme of study may well be sensitive towards the level of tuition provided, the quality of the materials delivered, the support provided for additional work and the quality of marking for example, and raise issues and concerns when things are not felt to be right. Less committed and involved students may be willing to accept almost whatever happens.

Fuzzy expectations

In some instances customers’ expectations may be somewhat unclear and they may not be certain what they expect from a service provider, although they may have quite clear views about what is unacceptable. Such vague ideas about what is required have been called ‘fuzzy’

expectations. ¹³ Expectations, as a whole, are seldom fuzzy but they usually include elements which are more or less fuzzy. In some cases these expectations may be implicit and are not actively or consciously thought about by customers, but they may become explicit when ex-pectations are either not met or exceeded.

Whether customers’ expectations are fuzzy or crystal clear, operations managers have to be certain about the expectations they are trying to meet. They need to understand them, defi ne them and then specify them to ensure that what they deliver meets that specifi cation (opera-tional service quality – see Section 5.7 ). In many cases this will require providing guidance to customer-facing staff to encourage them to ask questions to clarify the real needs of the cus-tomer, rather than to assume that what they are being asked for is actually what is required. Cus-tomers are often afraid of looking silly in front of other people (both cusCus-tomers and staff), and may ask for something quite inappropriate, leading to eventual dissatisfaction and defection.

In effect, service operations managers need to revisit the service concept ( Chapter 3 ) to identify possible gaps between what is in the mind of the customer and what is in the mind of the service provider.

Infl uencing expectations

The positioning of our expectations on the continuum between intolerable and ideal will be infl uenced by many things (see Figure 5.6 ). Our expectations about a train journey might be infl uenced by our previous experiences and the price we are paying, for example.

● Price often has a large infl uence on expectations. The higher the price, the higher up the

continuum towards ideal are customers’ expectations. Expectations of a customer fl ying

Figure 5.6

Price Alternatives available

Marketing Word of mouth Previous experience Customer’s mood/attitude

Confidence

Ideal

Intolerable More than

acceptable

Acceptable

Unacceptable

Expectations

Two key roles for operations managers that we will cover in this section are, fi rstly, how they can manage and infl uence customer expectations and, secondly, how they can manage ( manipulate) customers’ perceptions during the service process.

tourist class from Paris to Chicago will be at a different level to customers fl ying business or fi rst class. All three customers will have similar expectations about safety and timeliness, but expectations about legroom, quality of food, attentiveness of the service and ease of check-in may vary considerably. Price is perhaps one of the most important infl uences as customers are concerned not just about the service and their experiences and outcomes but also its value (see Chapter 3 ).

● Alternative services available will also help defi ne and set expectations. If you know that one airline provides a limo service when fl ying business class, you may expect other car-riers to do the same.

● Marketing can have a considerable infl uence on expectations. Marketing, image, branding and advertising campaigns help set expectations, often at great cost to the organisation.

● Word-of-mouth marketing, which is less controllable, can have a profound effect on a customer’s expectations. Indeed, in some situations, word-of-mouth may have a stronger infl uence than organisational marketing.

● Previous experience will help shape expectations, as prior knowledge not only makes them clearer and sharper but allows customers more accurately to position them on the scale. Previ-ous experience also acts as a moderator on marketing information either from the organisation or from word-of-mouth. It is important to note that previous experience may not be of the service provider in question but may be of other service providers. Our expectations for how we will be treated when we ring up our electricity supplier with a query will be infl uenced by our experiences with other contact centres, such as other utilities, retailers or fi nancial services. This aspect is often forgotten by service organisations that continue to think that because they are as good as any other organisation in their sector, this is good enough. This is clearly not true.

● Customers’ mood and attitude can affect their expectations. Someone in a bad mood or with a poor attitude to an organisation may have heightened expectations; someone less concerned and more tolerant may have a wider zone of tolerance and thus a wider range of expectations.

● Confi dence about an organisation, even before we have used an organisation, will also infl uence our expectations. If we have confi dence in our child’s new school because of its reputation, for example, we may have a higher set of expectations as to how we and our child will be treated.

Expectations are dynamic. They are not fi xed on a continuum between intolerable and ideal. They will change over time and indeed during the service itself. Customers are con-tinually experiencing many service situations and consuming services. Their expectations are under continual review and change. So what a customer may have felt to have been acceptable last time may well be different next time, as infl uenced by some of the factors above.

Expectations of a service never used

Because our expectations can be based on what we believe to be likely, we therefore do not need to have experienced a service to have expectations about it. People who have not experienced a funeral may have some clear expectations about the nature, mood and style of the event, and more fuzzy expectations about the actual series of events. These may be quite clear and explicit if they have, for example, witnessed such events second-hand, perhaps on television or in novels.