
Five ways to assess your service.
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How do you assess the quality of the service that you give to your customers?
You might ask focus groups or do a customer satisfaction survey. Or you could look at the number of complaints you get, or analyze the time it takes to answer customer queries.
While all of these can be useful for assessing what people think of your service, using approaches like these can lead you to miss areas that are important to your customers.
This is where the RATER Model can help. This useful tool highlights the areas that you need to focus on to provide great customer service. In this article, we'll explore the model, and we'll look at how you can use it to improve the service you provide to your customers.
Tip:
Remember that customers can be internal to your organization, as well as external. So this model is relevant in a wide range of scenarios.
The RATER Model was created by professors Valarie Zeithaml, A. Parasuraman, and Leonard Berry, and published in their 1990 book, "Delivering Quality Service."
The model highlights five areas that customers generally consider to be important when they use a service. These are:
By focusing on these five areas, you can analyze and improve service.
Tip:
The RATER Model is a simplified version of the SERVQUAL Model, which was first created in 1988. Nowadays, you must also consider the state of your online presence, as well.
Depending on the importance of your online channels to your business, you can consider this under the tangibles heading – even though your online presence isn't strictly "tangible" – or you could have a separate area for this. (We add questions relating to these below, even though these were not part of the original RATER model.)
A good way of using the RATER Model is to carry out a Gap Analysis using each of the five dimensions. You can then come up with a plan for improving the way that you serve your customers.
To do a Gap Analysis, you identify the following in each of the five areas:
You can use the following questions as a starting point for thinking about each area:
When you identify your future state and your current situation, it's important that you talk to your customers to understand their experiences and expectations fully.
Where you can't talk to customers directly, use tools such as Customer Experience Mapping to see your service from their perspective. You can also use Reverse Brainstorming to explore possible service improvements, and Benchmarking to compare your performance with similar organizations or services.
Tip:
There is arguably some crossover between the elements of the RATER Model. Don't worry about this – just aim to do a thorough analysis in each of the five areas.
The RATER Model was created by professors Valarie Zeithaml, A. Parasuraman, and Leonard Berry. It highlights five areas that customers consider important when they use a service. These are:
You use the model by doing a Gap Analysis in each of the five areas. From this, you can plan how you'll improve the service you give to your customers.
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