Quality Loss Functions for the Measurement of Service Quality

Abstract

Service industries are growing at an explosive rate, particularly in comparison with manufacturing. Numerous service industries concentrate on service quality to enhance their competitive power. Customer satisfaction is a growing concern to many leading companies throughout the world Improving service quality is considered an essential strategy for success and survival in today's competitive situation. In order to meet the actual needs of customers, it is important to quantify service quality. However, using Taguchi's quality loss function is not adequate for portraying the real situation in the service sector. In this paper, two modified quality loss functions are provided to measure service quality. The properties of these quality loss function parameters are discussed. The expected quality losses for the modified loss functions are also compared to that of Taguchi's loss function. The results show that these modified quality loss functions are much more suitable for measuring service quality.