Improving the quality of services marketing: Service (Re) design is the critical link

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Abstract
In recent years we have seen a radical shift in management thinking. Interest in service quality improvement, which had some early and superficial expression as customer care, is being refuelled by a number of problem‐solving techniques (with origins in total quality management) and broad‐based staff involvement with those techniques (with origins in participative management). These practices are not new but they are now often fused together in one integrated service quality programme. Every industry is now potentially a “service” industry. Every company has the opportunity to design and market its own unique set of service quality solutions to meet customer requirements. This demands practical approaches to monitoring service quality and diagnostic approaches to problem‐solving on an on‐going relationship marketing basis. This article puts a new emphasis on the meaning of internal marketing and brings to the fore and examines the linkages between services marketing and quality management, especially service (re)design, which is the critical link often ignored by marketers.