Developing the service template process: From measurement to agendas for improvement
Traditional survey-based measures of service quality are argued to be problematic when reflecting individual services and turning measurement into action. This paper reviews developments to an alternative measurement approach, the Service Template Process, and offers an extension to it. The extended process appears able to measure service users' and deliverers' perceptions of service quality independently. It also enables participants to jointly agree an agenda for quality improvement. The extended process is evaluated in four service situations. The paper concludes with an assessment of the advantages and disadvantages of the process in comparison with more traditional approaches to measuring service quality. Both authors contributed equally to this paper.
At one level, this paper may be regarded as an exercise in comparative industrial organisation. We are primarily interested in accounting for the highly successful performance of Japanese manufacturing firms in the innovation process. In pursuing this goal, however, it will be necessary to ‘unpack’, and to examine critically, some intellectual baggage that has strongly shaped and influenced the approach to innovative activity in the recent past. To the extent that our approach is convincing, it suggests a reordering of focus and emphasis in the study of innovation.