Hi guys, Mark here with Wolters World and we're in beautiful
Savannah, Georgia, in Forsyth Park There's the fountain right behind me,
which turns green at St. Patrick's Day.
And many people turn green that day as well here, but that's-
I don't think it's from the water, I think it's something else they're drinking.
Anyway, what we're going to talk about today is the GAP model.
Basically looking at, you know, comparing what clients are
expecting from companies and their services,
versus what they actually receive.
Okay, now, there's four main kind of gaps that come about.
A knowledge gap is one we talk about, a standards gap, a delivery
gap, and a communication gap.
Okay, so what we're gonna do is go through each of these gaps that
are in there-out there, and basically look at some ways that
we can help eliminate these gaps, so our, you know, our customers
will be happier with our services, okay?
Now, the first one we have is what's called the knowledge gap.
And this is the difference between what customers expect and what the
firm thinks the customers expect, okay?
I mean, if you think about it, you're going-if you're going to
Disneyland or if you're going to a hotel, you're-you're thinking of
certain things are going to be there, and the hotel may think,
"Well, I-we think they want this, this and this",
and you think, "Oh no, I think this, this and this,"
and there's going to be a gap between the two, okay?
Now, if you're looking to go to a high end hotel, like if I'm going
to a nice hotel, I'm expecting valet parking, I'm expecting the
concierge that will give me tickets to the best shows.
I'm expecting, um, I don't know, you know, high speed internet for
free, all kinds of things.
And when I don't get these things, no matter how nice my experience is,
if there is this gap, this difference from what I expected to
have and what I did get, I can be kind of disappointed.
And you'll see that in movies.
The movie you expect to be horrible and is okay, you think is great.
The movie that you expect to be great is only okay, you're disappointed.
Kind of goes into that.
Okay, now, how do we deal with this when we're a firm?
Well, the first thing you need to do is do your market research, okay?
Find out about your customers and find out what are your customers
expectations of their experience there, and realize that
their-their expectations will deal with their previous knowledge and
their previous experience dealing with your type of service, okay?
Also, when you're looking at the chance to evaluate your own service quality.
So look at your service quality.
I mean, is it reliable?
Okay, are you-are you good, you know, given the same things again and again?
You know, are you responsive to the customers?
You know, um, are you empathetic to their problems?
I mean, are you giving them tangible results?
So if there is an issue, you know, the remote control isn't working,
are you giving them a new remote control or giving them a new room?
Something they can kind of hold on to in a way that shows that you're
actually trying to do something, and you do that, you can help out, okay?
But the first one is the knowledge gap, the difference between
the-what customers are expecting and what the firm thinks they're expecting.
Okay, just in general.
Now, the second gap is called the standards gap, okay?
This is the difference between the service standards that customers
are expecting, and the service standards that they actually get
when they go there.
Okay, so if you're looking at, you're going to a hotel room, your
service standards that you're expecting are you expect a clean
bed, you expect no, no floaters in the toilet, okay?
You expect certain things, alright?
Now, to make sure we don't have any difference, like any problems
here, what companies need to do is work on setting up systems so the
same standards are kept up all the time.
That's why if you go to hotels, or if you go to a restaurant, they
have a little sheet in the bathroom that says okay, at one
o'clock, it was checked by John.
At two o'clock was checked by Marie.
At three o'clock was checked by Frank, you know?
How do you think-you set those systems up so the service
standards are up to what people are expecting.
Also, you need to train your people to, you know, basically
achieve those standards, okay?
So training becomes a big deal.
And especially in service in general, a lot of these things
will be dealt with-with training.
So you can't expect people to know what kick ass service is if you
don't explain it to them, because people can have a lot of different
definitions of what good customer service is, okay?
The third gap in the GAP model is what's called the delivery gap.
This is the difference between basically the promised service
that's out there and the actual service that is delivered to customers.
So if you think about it, you know, if you're gonna-if you're
ordering flowers, okay, you go there and you're like, okay, they
tell me that they're going to, you know, get my flowers
to my mom on Mother's Day.
Now, think about it.
Your mom gets flowers on Mother's Day.
You're a wonderful son.
If your mother gets flowers on the day after Mother's Day, you're a
horrible son that only remembered after everyone told you what a
horrible son you were the day before.
So obviously, there's going to be some issues there, all right?
Now for a company, if there are issues that, you know, what we,
you know, what we basically, you know, people are expecting us to
do or do aren't-aren't linking up, what can we do?
One thing you can do is empower your employees, okay?
If we're at a hotel and they're not delivering on their promises
of, you know, a clean room or a functioning room or a great T.V.
or whatever, empower your employees to let them switch them
rooms, okay, because no one wants to go downstairs and have to go
"Well, I need to call my manager."
Well, you know, where's the manager?
"Oh, he's on break, he'll be back in a half an hour."
Well, that doesn't help me when my kid needs to take a nap or my kids
got to poop and, you know, hey, we need a bathroom and you can't get
me into a room, okay?
These kinds of things.
So empower your employees to be able to make decisions that will
help, you know, shrink that delivery gap so you can fix things, okay?
Another thing is use technology to standardize your-the delivery of
your products.
That's why ATMs have become so popular.
There's no-there's no variability in the service.
Everything's the same thing again, and again.
So the delivery, hey, I know I put my card in, I put my PIN number in,
I asked for an amount of money, it comes out, I walk
away, we're all happy.
Hey, there's no problems with the delivery there, okay?
Other things you need to do, in terms of making sure that delivery
of your service works is be supportive of your employees.
If they're trying to do things.
You know, you give them a pat on the back, "you can do it" stuff,
have coherent management that's consistent telling the same thing.
This is what good customer service is.
This is what customer service is.
Deliver on that, deliver on that.
Well, that helps them know what they need to be doing.
Also, if you see one of your employees delivering great
customer service, reward them.
That's why you have employee of the month and all these kind of
things, because then people see, this is what you need to do to
deliver the services that were, you know, people are expecting.
Okay, and the fourth is the communication gap.
This is basically the gap between the promises that we make as a
company and what is actually delivered to our customers.
Now it sounds very similar to the delivery gap, but the delivery gap
is more dealing with, you know, the kind of the, um, I don't know,
how do you say it?
The promised service standards, whereas the communication gap is
overall promises that we all are offering people, okay?
Now the thing is, if you look at this, the communication gap,
basically, FedEx, they promised, "Look, we'll get your, your
package there overnight, guaranteed. It's gonna happen."
Alright, fantastic.
That's great.
So you expect it to be there.
If it's not, then you're upset.
That's why FedEx knows that, "Hey, we don't want to have this
"communication gap. Our promise of getting in the next day dependent on
"everything, because we don't deliver that then no one
" will ever trust us again."
Okay, so we don't want that to happen.
So, and that's one of the things that you look at the infomercials
at night for the P90X or the Weight Watchers or whatever.
They'll go through their whole spiel, okay, but what they say is,
look, you do this for 90 days, and follow the diet, because
they'll-they show the exercise stuff for most of the half hour.
Then they mention, oh, and then there's the diet plan, you got to follow.
Guys, the diet plan is one of the big things that has to happen for
you to get those benefits.
And that's why you need consumer compliance.
You need to let consumers does what they need to do to make sure
that the service actually works, okay?
And so you don't have this communication gap, some things you
need to do is one, manage customer expectations.
Don't promise them are going to lose 50 pounds in a month, because
that's an extreme case.
Give them realistic expectations of what can happen.
That's why they say, okay, you know, you can have these results,
but results aren't typical.
They show those things, they tell people these things, okay?
Also, only promise what you can deliver.
If you can't deliver it, don't promise, don't tell "Well, we'll
have it to you tonight" if you can't have it there, don't.
Say "Okay, we'll have it to you in a few days," that's fine.
Also, make sure you communicate the service expectations of your
clients, what they're going to need.
Look for, you're guaranteed to work, you need to actually use the
whole package, you need to follow the diet.
If you didn't, then too bad.
Okay, you need to put all those things out there.
Now, when you have these gaps, you obviously want to fix things if
things go wrong.
So basically, what are some things we can do to unscrew up?
How we can, you know, shrink-and shrink those gaps between our, you
know, the deliver-the promises, and the not delivered-delivered
promises and all these things?
Well, one thing, you need to listen to your clients.
Listen to what their problems are, and what they didn't like and what
they did like and fix them, okay?
And when you listen to your customers, you're gonna find out
more of what's going on so you can find out ways to improve it for
their next experience with the next person that comes.
Also the second thing is resolve the problems that you find and
that they let you know about quickly.
Okay, I know I was trying to pay my AT&T bill a few months ago, and
I tried to use the automatic system on my phone.
And it kept not working and kept not working, so I kept getting
knocked to a person.
And the person will try it again.
I'm like I already did, and they knock me back again.
And after half an hour of them keeps sending me back to people,
I said no, just do it yourself.
Finally they did it, and it took them 10 seconds.
Now instead of me being happy in them fixing it the first time to
do it on their own for 10 seconds, they now have me waste half an
hour which on an iPhone, you know, will take your entire battery.
This is an iPhone 3, so it's an old one, okay?
But also, now I have a bad taste in my mouth from my AT&T experience.
And you look at this and say, "Man, if they just would have
hurried up and fix the problem quickly, they could have done it
themselves, we wouldn't have these issues."
Okay, and the third thing is provide an equitable solution.
Okay, basically fix the problem and make sure it's, you know, fair
to them and to yourself because you can't give them the world.
You can't say, "Oh, you remote control isn't working? Okay, we're
going to give you the president suite".
No.
But you can, you know, offer them, you know, another room, a new
remote control. If the T.V.s that important and they're that upset,
give them a discount on your room, because the-you don't want to
be-have people upset with your your service and you're not doing
something to make it better, not make it equitable.
I know we were driving down here to Savannah, we stopped at a hotel.
They were remodeling, the pool was closed.
They wouldn't even look if there was a baby bed and they wanted
everyone to pay full price.
Like, aren't you gonna make some kind of concessions here?
No.
Okay, well forget you.
I'm not going back to you to Holiday Inn and Hopkinsville,
Tennessee or Kentucky or whatever, you know?
You get these things.
You don't want that to happen, okay?
So those are some ideas of basically what the GAP model is.
So the gap, you know, the knowledge gap, the standards gap,
the delivery gap, and the communication gap.
You want to make sure that these gaps are as small as possible so
you have happy customers, and here's the crazy thing.
If you actually beat the expectations, you can get
customers that will be loyal to you for life.
So I hope that helps you understand the math there-sorry,
the GAP model, and basically how you can unscrew up in some of these things.
It was developed by Dr. Parasuraman, Professor Paras-
He's got such a long name, you can't actually say it.
I have met the man, he's a very nice guy.
I hope this video does him justice.
But I hope that helps.
And if you want to learn more about marketing or business or
other things or, hey, visiting Savannah, Georgia, top 10 sites in
Savannah, 5 things to love and hate about Savannah, come check us
at our website. It's www.WoltersWorld.com.
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So hope to see you there.
Bye.