Essay Sample on Customer Service Quality at Urban Planet, Canada

Literature Review

This section involves the analysis of previous theoretical works on customer service, satisfaction, loyalty, and customer preserved quality that contributes to poor consumer service and employee dissatisfaction with the business. Also presented in this chapter is the current model derived from previous research. The concentration is on the critical elements of the study which are quality service, customer satisfaction, and loyalty and customer perceived quality.

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Additionally, this review was designed to develop a critical evaluation of the impacts of previous literature on this study, the weaknesses and strengths of each research work. Taking customer service quality at Urban Planet as a case study, it is important to remember the significance of customer satisfaction as an essential point that is linked to the quality of service outcome of a company. In the marketing process, the ability to retain existing customers is viewed as a primary contribution to business success (Chhay, Ok, Suy, & Choun, 2018). The cost of attracting new customers is significantly higher than the cost of retaining customers. Therefore, companies need to understand the value of providing quality service to customers. This review acknowledges the fact that Service quality is one fundamental measurement which is figured into the consumers' satisfaction and perception of the service quality.

In the Inclusion criteria, the search was restricted to using publications after 2014 in accordance with the emergence of trends of customer care qualities. Also, this review focused on both women and men as the target group of those who accessed Urban planet and experienced the company's services provision. The exclusion criteria involve the rejection of unauthenticated sources such as editorials, books and letters which may not contain original information. The exclusion is also applied to non-peer reviewed literature in this review. Following this type of inclusion, a step of searching in online databases using key words to identify the published and unpublished articles and journals.

For this matter, this review located 23 articles of which 20 were taken to be used in the study. Methodologies used to collect information on service quality in the field included the use of survey-based methods such as interviews and questionnaires. Survey-based methods work well in determining the rates of dimensions of the SERQUAL model. Considering the heterogeneity of this study, a qualitative analysis was not possible but rather a narrative report of the review is presented. Specifically focusing Urban Planet, this literature review studies the key elements of customer service including, the customer, service quality, service perception, and the SERVQUAL model and related studies to improving service value.

The Customer

The customer is one who uses the output of a production or service. According to Yilmaz, Varnalim and Kasnakoglu (2016), types and preferences of customers keep changing in demand for high-quality products and services. This change in customer attitude calls for the need to adopt a creative tactic of meeting the steadily growing requirements of the modern-day customer who is more sophisticated, more informed and knows the existence of alternatives. These authors also denote that customers leaving angry comments and picking conflicts with the customer care representatives are one issue that many companies face and Urban Planet is not an exception. Hapsari, Clemes and Dean (2016) also point out that any report or comment about the dissatisfaction of service should be recorded as a complaint.

Rezaei, et al., (2018) proclaim that a few complaints by the customer in an organization are not a pointer to satisfaction, but instead, few grievances are critically seen as an indicator of slow progress. The strength of the finding on the customer's negative remarks on service is an indicator of their dissatisfaction, as described by Lemon and Verhoef (2016), is that a company can use the comments to find out their shortcomings and address them. The weakness of this study is that the perceived quality of the customer can be misguided by attitudes and bias judgments. According to Lemon and Verhoef (2016), it is right to say that a customer holds a significant position in the market of an organization. Therefore, just as the Urban Planet recorded some complaints from its customers, so should other organizations also adopt the practice of addressing arising issues.

Both Smith (2018) and Cochran (n.d.) have significantly contributed to the study of customer behavior and the importance of analyzing feedback for business growth. In both works, the consumer is seen as a determining factor of the success of a company. Potential buyers at urban Planet are disappointed by the shipping services of the company and most of them probably think of changing their mind about shipping from the company. This customer dissatisfaction pauses a risk to the success of the company and therefore understanding the value and meaning of customers is the first step for a company such as Urban Planet should consider.

Customer Service Quality

According to Hwang and Seo (2016), customer satisfaction is directly proportional to the quality of customer care service offered. It is true that profits are made through the satisfaction of the customer. They add that for the customer to get satisfied, the quality of services provided has to be appreciated. Pizam, Shapoval, and Ellis (2016) also concur through their work when they say that satisfaction in customer service holds a significant spot in the theory of marketing and is based on the ground that the profit is made. In other words, quality customer service means consistent customers, more sales on items and increased cash flow. In the case of Urban Planet, improving service quality is the best way of retaining disappointed customers.

Quality of customer service is only sure when there are indicators of employee satisfaction. Scholars regularly confirm an essential relationship between recurrent purchasing, significant brand loyalty and recording of a favorable opinion (Kasiri, Cheng, Sambasivan and Sidin, (2017). The excellent job of Kasiri et al. (2017), is appreciated by the fact that companies now understand the secret behind recurrent buying and customer loyalty to a business. Urban Planet consequently recorded a tremendous rate of customer complaints on their new policy of return making most customers to lose trust in the services rendered. Thus the best way to achieve this according to Kasiri et al. (2017) is the review of their return policy as a way of increasing customer quality.

The Urban Planet's current business scenario does not concur with Yilmaz et al. (2016) opinion when they denote that the lack of complaints is a dangerous thing that indicates poor customer quality; this is because the more the claims that Urban Planet recorded meant that the customer service quality had dropped, suggesting a reduction in complaints will say the opposite. However, their study is valid when critically evaluated to mean that a business lacking customer complaint has no longer competition strength because of the feedback act as the push for improvement.

The Customer Perceived Service Quality

Dabholkar (2015) Explains that the customer's perception of the quality of service is based on different factors starting from creation to the final product is known as the customer perceived service quality. According to him, it is often projected that an improvement in the customer's purchasing power on specific products and services such as those which they are familiar with, automatically leads to service quality. However, on critical inspection of the measure of service quality, a significant component focuses on the of factor buyer interaction with the delivery of service that includes customer attitudes and behaviors (Grigoroudis & Politis, 2018). It is correct to say that the beliefs, actions, and judgment of customers on a service act as a measure of service quality.

The strengths of this study, which is significantly contributed by Dabholkar (2015), is that this research provides knowledge on the understanding that customer service is influenced by the way that customers perceive product quality. The weakness of the literature study about perceived customer quality is that consumers may present attitudes that are biased with wrong judgment, thus sending forth a false indication that the dissatisfaction of the consumers is legit. Despite this weakness, the research strength still proves that the view of the customer on a service or product causes a significant effect on the service quality; this is according to Jiang, Jun and Yang (2015).

Kondasani and Panda (2015) present that the Perceived Customer Service Quality is linked to customer loyalty and that both are critical in developing service improvement. They also point out that many service firms experience difficulty in predicting the type of service that is considered as high quality by the consumer and levels they would like the service to be delivered. On careful dimension, Kondasani and Panda's work is useful to many businesses through their focus on the element of human interaction which they say consists of Judgements and attitudes.

According to Chhay, Ok, Suy and Choun (2018), customer perception on quality service is formed by some encounters that they have had with the organization. Additionally, Customer perception is directly linked with how satisfied they are with the experiences they face. Conclusively, the encounters that the customers have mainly depend on the joint efforts of the customer service providers of the company.

The Urban Planet business witnessed a high number of customer complaints within a similar period. The company's complaints site recorded comments such as bad customer treatment by customer care agents delayed shipping and loss of items and an overall worst customer experience. This research study on customer reaction on their service delivery is an excellent indicator of the Weakness of customer service quality. From the survey on the literature review, the customer is seen as the primary determinant of the type of service that is offered. Therefore, the work of Lee and How (2018) in this study on the customer experience is still relevant as it links with the experiences that the customers of Urban Planet business underwent and the satisfaction from the shipping service

The SERVQUAL

The SERVQUAL model was developed by Zeithaml and Parasuraman as a measure of service quality (Ghotbabadi, Feiz & Baharun, 2015). They explain that the approach for measuring the quality of service is by use of comparison of the customer's expectation before the service encounters and their perception of the actual service that is delivered. Ghotbabadi, Feiz and Baharun (2015) use their work by describing the five generic dimensions connected to SERVQUAL as Tangibles, Reliability, Responsiveness Empathy and Assurance.

"Figure 1. The SERVQUAL Model of quality customer service, by (Ghotbabadi, Feiz and Baharun (2015)"

This above model discusses the perceived quality service and the relationship with customer satisfaction. Yaghoubi, Asgari and Javadi (2017) also demonstrate that not all dimensions are equal and that a service provider cannot focus on one aspect and let the other ones suffer. A careful study on the dimensions can be explained that in reliability the customers always want to count on the providers and consequently the providers need to find out what the customer expects. For responsiveness, the customer service is quick in response while assurance is when the service delivered is done by experts and communication of t...