Question

Explain in 400 of your own words why might customer actions and attitudes cause the service performance gap to occur? Use an example in your personal experience to illustrate your understanding.

Answer 1

A service performance gap occurs when the customer feels that the service did not meet the standards set by the company. Customer actions and attitudes are composed of beliefs, feeling and behavior towards a product or service in a marketing context. When a customer believes that the service did not meet their expectations, it results in a service performance gap. Customer actions and attitudes play a critical role in the occurrence of the service performance gap. This can be illustrated in the following example with the various components of customer actions and attitudes.

Consider the example of a hungry person visiting a restaurant to take a meal. The customer quickly browses through the food menu. The customer chooses a table and sits there awaiting the waiter to order the meal. It is a peak time and the restaurant is full of customers with waiters remaining busy in attending orders. This causes a delay in the Waiter coming to the hungry customer in taking the order. The hungry customer becomes a little angry due to this delay but due to the hunger orders the meal. The customer waits for the meal to arrive at the earliest and informs the waiter. The delay gets further with no sign of the waiter. The hungry customer is all eyes to the kitchen to see any sight of the waiter. It has been more than 30 minutes and now the behavior of the hungry customer changes totally. The customer is restless and in full anger indicating the behavior change. The attitude of the customer towards the waiter and the restaurant change causing a service performance gap in this case. The customer becomes restless and shows his anger openly on the waiter serving another table. The customer is both hungry and angry leading to this customer action of showing anger openly on the waiter. The manager comes to soothe the customer and apologizes for the delay in delivering the meal citing the peak time. The customer does not get satisfied with the customer service and the service performance gap widens. The customer states that the restaurant does not meet the service standards set by it and shows the dissatisfaction. In this case, the customer attitude has changed and without even tasting the meal, the customer believes the restaurant service is not up to the standard resulting in the service performance gap. The hungry customer instead of getting relief from hunger had shown the anger, frustration, attitude and behavior change towards the restaurant waiter and the administration of the restaurant resulting in the service performance gap.