Ryan Gondokusumo: Quality Standards in Service Businesses

In building a business, especially in the field of services, the relationship between customers as consumers and businesses as producers is very important. The success of the service business itself is determined by how much satisfaction the service customer is.

Founder and CEO of a service company Sribu, Ryan Gondokusumo, sharing his insights related to tips on building a business in the service sector, especially in building and improving service quality.

The following is a complete explanation regarding service quality standards for businesses in the service sector, based on the perspective of practitioners working in service companies. Read more.

Service Quality Standards: Customer Satisfaction is Key

Services are economic activities that are intangible, ie their activities involve a number of interactions between producers and consumers, but do not result in a transfer of ownership of something and are not tied to a physical product.

Service quality itself is defined as an assessment or public attitude towards a service. Perception of service quality is the result of a comparison between customer expectations and actual service performance.

That way, business people as producers often find it difficult to measure the quality of the services they offer. Thus, customer ratings derived from satisfaction are very influential in measuring service quality in businesses in the service sector.

According to Ryan, customer satisfaction is very important in running a business, especially in the service sector. He said that service providers must provide services that can satisfy their customers' expectations.

"If the service is not carried out in accordance with the expectations of the client or customer, then in the future the client will not use the service anymore. So, customer satisfaction is very important," said Ryan.

Customer satisfaction with services can bring benefits to service providers. For example, such as bringing in repeat purchases, creating customer loyalty, satisfied customers providing recommendations to other parties, and so on.

Dimensions that are the benchmark for service quality

With the effect of customer satisfaction on the service business, service providers need to know how much customer satisfaction they provide for the services they provide, in order to measure and improve the quality of their services.

Ryan revealed three benchmarks that became the standard of service quality for businesses in the service sector. First, the quality of the workforce. This can be seen from the qualifications and competencies of the service providers themselves.

"Second, communication. Communication is seen from how well the service provider delivers Update to the customer. In addition, it can also be seen from how detailed the service provider explains and asks customer needs," Ryan continued.

Third, speed. This is seen from the ability of service providers to provide and complete services to customers, in accordance with mutually agreed deadlines.

“So, see how fast the service provider is deliver the result of his work. If the agreed deadline is two days, but the service provider deliver The results of the work turned out to be ten days, it can also make the quality of the service not good, "

Not much different from the three benchmarks put forward by Ryan as a practitioner, there are also benchmarks for service quality standards according to Parasuraman, Zeithaml and Berry (1998) as experts. These experts assess that there are five dimensions of service quality, including the following:

• Reliability (reliability), namely the ability of service providers to provide promised services to customers accurately and satisfactorily.
• Responsiveness (responsiveness), namely the response and alertness of service provider companies and their workforce to help consumers through the services provided.
• Guarantee (provident insurance), which includes the competence, courtesy and credibility of the service provider workforce, which relates to customer trust in the company, such as reputation, achievements and so on.
• Empathy (empathy), namely the attention of service providers to their customers through easy access in conducting communication relationships in order to understand consumer needs.
• direct evidence (tangible), includes physical facilities, equipment, appearance of the workforce and communication facilities owned by service providers.

Tips for Building Service Business Quality Standards

Ryan assessed that the first step that business actors need to take as service providers, in building service quality standards in service businesses, is to know customer expectations first.

According to him, service quality standards can be built from starting to meet customer demands and expectations properly.

“For example, a customer wants a website to be made within two days, but requirement The amount given is very large, so that service providers object to it. As a service provider, you have to be open, let your customers know how long it will take to complete,” explained Ryan.

He considered, in order to improve the quality of service in terms of customer management,  service providers must be able to provide a realistic picture, related to technical and ability to solve customer requests.

Furthermore, service providers need to pay attention to the dimensions that become the benchmark for service quality standards themselves. "Back to the three things earlier, namely quality, communication and speed" delivered service providers that meet customer expectations,” explained Ryan.

"In terms of quality, of course, by increasing flight hours, the more portfolio of service providers, the more you can get" handle customers, so that in the future they will create higher quality work results,” he said.

How Sribu Company Improves Service Quality

Sribu is a service company engaged in providing content-based digital marketing and content solutions crowdsourcing. The mission of this service company is to make digital branding and marketing services more accessible to all business people, from small, medium to large.

“We bring together clients as customers with freelancer as a service provider. To date, Sribu already has more than 15 thousand clients and 26 thousand customers freelancer curated,” said Ryan.

Ryan then revealed that Sribu's service quality standards depend on quality freelancer as a service provider using the platform crowdsourcing owned by the service company.

He said that Sribu's way to improve the quality of its services is by curating at the beginning of recruitment freelancer. The curation process is seen from the portfolio, work experience, communication methods, to how to fill in the profile of the candidate freelancer The.

“Our database records that there are 400 freelancers who have registered to become service providers on our platform, but we have curated it to only 26 thousand. Most of these freelancers are engaged in the field of marketing and Branding. Starting from website makers, designers, copywriters, photographers, social media marketers, digital marketers and others," said Ryan.

In addition to carrying out strict curation of freelancer as a service provider, Sribu also maximizes its services in bridging service providers and customers, so that communication between the two parties is getting better.

“We are trying to provide a good communication medium. In the future we will also make mobile app so that communication between the two parties is easier. We prepare all kinds tools to facilitate access to services.” close Ryan.