McGraw-Hill/Irwin Copyright © 2013 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

Dual Customer Expectation Levels

Customers hold different types of expectations about service. We
can focus on two types.
The highest can be termed desired service: the level of service the
customer hopes to receive – the ‘wished for’ level of performance.
Desired service is a blend of what the customer believes ‘can be’
and ‘should be’.
For example, consumers who sign up for a computer dating service
expect to find compatible, attractive, interesting people to date
and perhaps even someone to marry.

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Dual Customer Expectation Levels
 The expectation reflects the hopes and wishes of these
consumers; without these hopes and wishes and the belief that
they may be fulfilled, consumers would probably not purchase
the dating service.

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Dual Customer Expectation Levels
 Not all airlines or hotels you may be interested in may have a
relationship with Expedia.com
 In this situation and in general, customers hope to achieve their
service desires but recognize that this is not always possible.
 We call the threshold level of acceptable service adequate
service – the level of service the customer will accept.
 Adequate service represents the ‘minimum tolerable
expectation’, the bottom level of performance acceptable to the
customer.
 Figure 3.2 shows these two expectation standards as the upper
and lower boundaries for customer expectations. This figure
portrays the idea that customers assess service performance on
the basis of two standard boundaries: what they desire and
what they deem acceptable
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Dual Customer Expectation Levels

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Dual Customer Expectation Levels
 Levels of expectation are why two organizations in the same
business can offer far different levels of service and still keep
customers happy.
 It is why McDonald’s can extend excellent industrialized service
with few employees per customer and why an expensive
restaurant with many tuxedoed waiters may be unable to do as
well from the customer’s point of view.
 A customer’s desired service expectation for fast-food
restaurants is quick, convenient, tasty food in a clean setting.
 The desired service expectation for an expensive restaurant, on
the other hand, usually involves elegant surroundings, gracious
employees, candlelight and fine food.

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Dual Customer Expectation Levels
 The adequate service expectation level, on the other hand, may
vary for different firms within a category or subcategory.
 Within fast-food restaurants, a customer may hold a higher
expectation for McDonald’s than for Burger King, having
experienced consistent service at McDonald’s over time and
somewhat inconsistent service at Burger King.
 It is possible, therefore, that a customer can be more
disappointed with service from McDonald’s than from Burger
King even though the actual level of service at McDonald’s may
be higher than the level at Burger King.

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The Zone of Tolerance
 Services are heterogeneous in that performance may vary
across providers, across employees from the same provider,
and even with the same service employee.
 The extent to which customers recognize and are willing to
accept this variation is called the zone of tolerance.
 If service drops below adequate service – the minimum level
considered acceptable – customers will be frustrated and their
satisfaction with the company will be undermined.
 If service performance is higher than the zone of tolerance at the
top end – where performance exceeds desired service –
customers will be very pleased and probably quite surprised as
well.

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The Zone of Tolerance

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The Zone of Tolerance
 As an example, consider the service at a checkout queue in a
grocery store. Most customers hold a range of acceptable times
for this service encounter – probably somewhere between five
and 10 minutes.
 If service consumes that period of time, customers probably do
not pay much attention to the wait.
 If a customer enters the line and finds sufficient checkout
personnel to serve him or her in the first two or three minutes,
he or she may notice the service and judge it as excellent.
 On the other hand, if a customer has to wait in line for 15
minutes, he or she may begin to grumble and look at his or her
watch. The longer the wait is below the zone of tolerance, the
more frustrated the customer becomes.

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The Zone of Tolerance
 This example shows that the marketer must understand not just
the size and boundary levels for the zone of tolerance but also
when and how the tolerance zone fluctuates with a given
customer.

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Different customers possess different zones of
tolerance
 Different customers possess different tolerance zones.
 Some customers have narrow zones of tolerance, requiring a
tighter range of service from providers, whereas other
customers allow a greater range of service. For example, very
busy customers would likely always be pressed for time, desire
short wait times in general and hold a constrained range for the
length of acceptable wait times.
 When it comes to meeting plumbers or repair personnel at their
home for problems with domestic appliance, customers who
work outside the home have a more restricted window of
acceptable time duration for that appointment than do
customers who work in their homes or do not work at all.

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Different customers possess different zones of
tolerance
 An individual customer’s zone of tolerance increases or
decreases depending on a number of factors, including
company-controlled factors such as price.
 When prices increase, customers tend to be less tolerant of poor
service.
 In this case, the zone of tolerance decreases because the
adequate service level shifts upward.

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Zones of tolerance vary for service dimensions
 In general, customers are likely to be less tolerant about
unreliable service (broken promises or service errors) than other
service deficiencies, which means that they have higher
expectations for this factor.
 We can express the boundaries of customer expectations of
service with two different levels of expectations: desired service
and adequate service.
 The desired service level is less subject to change than the
adequate service level.
 A zone of tolerance separates these two levels. This zone of
tolerance varies across customers and expands or contracts
with the same customer.

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Sources of desired service expectations
 The two largest influences on desired service level are personal
needs and philosophies about service.
 Personal needs, those states or conditions essential to the
physical or psychological well-being of the customer, are pivotal
factors that shape what customers desire in service.
 Personal needs can fall into many categories, including physical,
social, psychological and functional.
 A cinema-goer who regularly goes to see films straight from
work, and is therefore thirsty and hungry, hopes and desires that
the food and drink counters at the cinema will have short queues
and attentive staff, whereas a cinema-goer who regularly has
dinner elsewhere has a low or zero level of desired service
from the food and drink counters.

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Sources of desired service expectations
 A customer with high social and dependency needs may have
relatively high expectations for a hotel’s ancillary services,
hoping, for example, that the hotel has a bar with live music
and dancing.
 Lasting service intensifiers are individual, stable factors that lead
the customer to a heightened sensitivity to service.
 One of the most important of these factors can be called derived
service expectations, which occur when customer expectations
are driven by another person or group of people.
 A niece from a big family who is planning a ninetieth birthday
party for a favourite aunt is representing the entire family in
selecting a restaurant for a successful celebration. Her needs are
driven in part by the derived expectations from the other family
members.
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Sources of desired service expectations
 Another lasting service intensifier is personal service philosophy
– the customer’s underlying generic attitude about the meaning
of service and the proper conduct of service providers.
 If you have ever been employed as a member of waiting staff in a
restaurant, you are likely to have standards for restaurant
service that were shaped by your training and experience in
that role.
 You might, for example, believe that waiters should not keep
customers waiting longer than 15 minutes to take their orders.
Knowing the way a kitchen operates, you may be less tolerant of
lukewarm food or errors in the order than customers who have
not held the role of waiter or waitress.
 In general, customers who are themselves in service businesses
or have worked for them in the past seem to have especially
strong service philosophies.
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Sources of adequate service expectations
 A different set of determinants affects adequate service, the
level of service the customer finds acceptable.
 Influence adequate service: (1) temporary service intensifiers,
(2) perceived service alternatives, (3) customer self-perceived
service role, (4) situational factors, and (5) predicted service.
 The first set of elements, temporary service intensifiers, consists
of short-term, individual factors that make a customer more
aware of the need for service.
 Personal emergency situations in which service is urgently
needed (such as an accident and the need for car insurance or a
breakdown in office equipment during a busy period) raise the
level of adequate service expectation, particularly the level of
responsiveness required and considered acceptable.

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Sources of adequate service expectations
 Perceived service alternatives are other providers from whom
the customer can obtain service.
 An airline customer who lives in a provincial town with a small
airport, for example, has a reduced set of options in airline
travel.
 This customer will be more tolerant of the service performance
of the carriers in the town because few alternatives exist.
 He or she will accept the scheduling and lower levels of service
more than will the customer in a big city who has myriad flights
and airlines to choose from.
 In general, service marketers must discover the alternatives that
the customer views as comparable rather than those in the
company’s competitive set.

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Sources of adequate service expectations
 A third factor affecting the level of adequate service is the
customer’s self-perceived service role.
 We define this as customer perceptions of the degree to which
customers exert an influence on the level of service they receive.
 In other words, customers’ expectations are partly shaped by
how well they believe they are performing their own roles in
service delivery.
 The customer’s active participation in the service also affects this
factor. A customer who does not get his or her car serviced
regularly is likely to be more lenient on the car manufacturer
when he or she experiences problems than one who
conscientiously follows the manufacturers service schedules.

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Sources of adequate service expectations
 Levels of adequate service are also influenced by situational
factors, defined as service performance conditions that
customers view as beyond the control of the service provider.
 For example, where personal emergencies such as serious car
accidents would likely intensify customer service expectations of
insurance companies (because they are temporary service
intensifiers), catastrophes that affect a large number of people at
one time (floods or storms) may lower service expectations
because customers recognize that insurers are inundated with
demands for their services.
 Customers who recognize that situational factors are not the
fault of the service company may accept lower levels of
adequate service given the context.

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Sources of adequate service expectations
 The final factor that influences adequate service is predicted
service, the level of service that customers believe they are likely
to get.
 This type of service expectation can be viewed as predictions
made by customers about what is likely to happen during an
impending transaction or exchange.
 For example, travellers may expect poorer service from some
of the no-frills airlines such as Ryanair or easyJet in comparison
to some of the full-cost airlines (British Airways, Air France)

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Sources of both desired and predicted service
expectations
 When consumers are interested in purchasing services, they are
likely to seek or take in information from several different
sources. For example, they may call a store, ask a friend or
deliberately track newspaper advertisements to find the needed
service at the lowest price.
 This section discusses one internal and three external factors
that influence both desired service and predicted service
expectations: (1) explicit service promises, (2) implicit service
promises, (3) word-of-mouth communications and (4) past
experience.

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Sources of both desired and predicted service
expectations
 Explicit service promises are personal and non-personal
statements about the service made by the organization to
customers.
 The statements are personal when they are communicated by
salespeople or service or repair personnel; they are non-
personal when they come from advertising, brochures and
other written publications.
 Explicit service promises are one of the few influences on
expectations that are completely in the control of the service
provider

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Sources of both desired and predicted service
expectations
 Implicit service promises are service-related cues other than
explicit promises that lead to inferences about what the service
should and will be like.
 These quality cues are dominated by price and the tangibles
associated with the service.
 In general, the higher the price and the more impressive the
tangibles, the more a customer will expect from the service.
 Consider a customer who shops for insurance, finding two firms
charging radically different prices. He or she may infer that the
firm with the higher price should and will provide higher-
quality service and better coverage.
 Similarly, a customer who stays at a five-star hotel is likely to
desire and predict a higher standard of service than from a hotel
with less impressive facilities
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Sources of both desired and predicted service
expectations
 The importance of word-of-mouth communication in shaping
expectations of service is well documented.
 These personal and sometimes non-personal statements made
by parties other than the organization convey to customers
what the service will be like and influence both predicted and
desired service.
 Word-of-mouth communication carries particular weight as an
information source because it is perceived as unbiased.
 Word of mouth tends to be very important in services that are
difficult to evaluate before purchase and before direct
experience of them.
 Experts (including consumer reports, friends and family) are also
word-of-mouth sources that can affect the levels of desired and
predicted service.
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Sources of both desired and predicted service
expectations
 Past experience, the customer’s previous exposure to service
that is relevant to the focal service, is another force in shaping
predictions and desires. The service relevant for prediction can
be previous exposure to the focal firm’s service. For example,
you probably compare each stay in a particular hotel with all
previous stays in that hotel.
 First, managers need to know the pertinent expectation
sources and their relative importance for a customer
population, a customer segment and, perhaps, even a
particular customer.
 Second, they need to know, for instance, the relative weight of
word of mouth, explicit service promises and implicit service
promises in shaping desired service and predicted service.

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Sources of both desired and predicted service
expectations
 Some of these sources are more stable and permanent in their
influence (such as lasting service intensifiers and personal needs)
than the others, which fluctuate considerably over time (like
perceived service alternatives and situational factors).

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Factors That Influence Desired and Predicted
Service

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Frequently Asked Questions About
Customer Expectations
 What does a service marketer do if customer
expectations are “unrealistic”?
 Should a company try to delight the customer?
 How does a company exceed customers’ service
expectations?
 Do customers’ service expectations continually
escalate?
 How does a service company stay ahead of competition
in meeting customer expectations?

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What does a service marketer do if
customer expectations are “unrealistic”?
 Customers’ main expectations of service are quite
simple and basic: “Simply put, customers expect service
companies to do what they are supposed to do”.
 They expect fundamentals, not fanciness; performance,
not empty promises.’
 Customers want service to be delivered as promised.
They want planes to take off on time, hotel rooms to be
clean, food to be hot and service providers to show up
when scheduled.

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Should a company try to delight the
customer?
 Management consultants urge service companies to
‘delight’ customers to gain a competitive edge.
 Delighting customers may seem like a good idea, but
this level of service provision comes with extra effort
and cost to the firm.
 Therefore, the benefits of providing delight must be
weighed.
 Among the considerations are the staying power and
competitive implications of delight.
 If a competitor can easily copy the delight strategy,
however, neither firm benefits (although the
consumer does!), and all firms may be hurt because
their costs increase and profits erode.
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How does a company exceed customers’
service expectations?
 First, it is essential to recognize that exceeding customer
expectations of the basics is virtually impossible. Honouring
promises – having the reserved room available, meeting
deadlines, showing up for meetings, delivering the core service
– is what the company is supposed to do.
 Another way to exceed expectations is to deliberately under-
promise the service to increase the likelihood of exceeding
customer expectations. The strategy is to under-promise and
over deliver.
 A final way to exceed expectations without raising them in the
future is to position unusual service as unique rather than the
standard. For example, a restaurant may offer customers a free
dessert by claimimg that the chef is trying out some new
recipes/creations.

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How does a service company stay ahead of
competition in meeting customer expectations?
 If a company’s level of service is barely above the
adequate service level to begin with, a competitor can
quickly erode that advantage.
 Companies currently performing in the region of
competitive advantage must stay alert to the need for
service increases to meet or beat competition.
 To develop a true customer franchise – immutable
customer loyalty – companies must not only
consistently exceed the adequate service level but
also reach the desired service level.
 Exceptional service can intensify customers’ loyalty to a
point at which they are impervious to competitive
options.
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