Towards a better understanding of service excellence

Some organisations are becoming more concerned with delighting their customers than simply satisfying them. Yet despite an extensive literature on service quality and satisfaction little has been written about service excellence and how organisations can achieve delighted customers. The purpose of this exploratory but empirically based paper is to provide a definition of service excellence to help marketers and managers, where appropriate, design and deliver it. This paper is based on over 400 statements of excellent and poor service gathered from around 150 respondents. After categorising them, using a grounded theory approach, it is suggested that service excellence is about being “easy to do business with”. This has four key elements: delivering the promise, providing a personal touch, going the extra mile and resolving problems well. Further analysis of the frequencies of mention revealed the overarching importance of dealing well with problems and queries.