What is “Moment of Truth”?

“Moment of Truth” of buyer and seller interaction is the core of Gronroos model. The actual delivery of the promise takes place here. The employees of the firm directly interact with the customers. The concept of moment of truth means that this is the time and places the service provider has the opportunity to demonstrate to the customer the quality of its services.

Interactive marketing takes place outside the marketing mix. It takes place at the very moment the buyer and seller interacts. These interactions are also caIIed1§qrvice encounters. It is the skill and motivational tools employed by service personnel in, handling the customer contacts. In this process of interaction the customer judges the quality 8f service delivered by the service provider.

History:

Richard Norman first invented the conceptual framework of “MOMENT OF TRUTH”. Subsequently Scandinavian Airlines adopted it as a part, of their everyday language, particularly after Jan Carizon of SAS published book titled “Moment of Truth”. Since then moment of truth has become a widely used concept, a household word within the service industry everywhere.

The Concept:

Most services are the result of, social acts, which take place in direct contact between the customer and service provider. Taking the metaphor from bull fighting, the customer’s perceived quality is realised at the moment of truth, where the service provider and the customer confront one another in the arena. At the moment they are very much on their own. What happens then, cannot be directly influenced by the firm.

In the period of three years Jan Carloz the president of SAS transformed the company from a major loser to the best Airline of the year. In this book he explains” Last year, each one of our 10 million customers came in contact with approximately 5 SAS employees, and this contact lasted for about 15 seconds each time. Thus SAS is created in the minds of the customer 50 million times in a year, 15 seconds at a time. These 50 millions ‘moments of truth’ are the moments when we prove to our customers that SAS is their best alternative.”

Gronroos states that the customer’s perception of service quality can be judged on two aspects the technical and functional quality.

The judgment on the basis of technical and functional qualities varies depending on the type of service encounter. The service can be classified into three categories:

1)      Remote encounter: The tangible evidence of the services becomes a primary basis for judging quality as there is no human contact in service delivery. E.g. ATM vending machines.

2)      Phone encounter: Here the service quality can be judged on the basis of how long they had to wait for the phone to be attended, the tone of voice and efficiency in handling the issues.

3)      Face- to- face encounter: When there is direct contact with the employee and customer this type of encounter occurs. In this situation determining the quality is highly complex as it will be influenced by the behaviour of both the customer and employee.

In order to assess the quality services tangible cues like physical setting, equipment, appearance of personnel and intangible cues like attitude and behaviour of personnel will be considered.

Thus in the interactive marketing, service encounter or the moment of truth is where the value to the customer is created in the service delivery process. At this stage all the efforts of internal and external marketing will be reflected.

On the basis of thousand stories, four common themes – recovery .(after failure), adaptability,

spontaneity, & coping – have been identified as the sources of customer satisfaction/ dissatisfaction in memorable service encounter.

1. Recover: (Employees response to service delivery failure) the 1^st  theme includes all themes in which there has been a failure of services & the employee is required to respond in some way to customer. The failure may be hotel room is – not available, flight may delay or a critical error in internal documents. In these cases employees have to response which is remembered by the customer favorably.
2. Adaptabilty: (Employee response to customer needs & requests) The second theme underlying in satisfaction/dissatisfaction is how adaptable the service delivery system is when the customer has special needs & requests that place demands on the process. In such cases, customer judge, service encounters quality in the terms of flexibility of the employee & the system. Customers will be pleased if employees go out of their way to accommodate their special needs & requests. On the other hand the employee are unwilling to accommodate, customers are angered & frustrated.
3. Spontaneity: (Unpromptness & unsolicited employees actions) Even when there is no service failure & is special request or need, customer can still service encounters as being highly satisfied or highly dissatisfied Employee spontaneity in delivering memorable good or poor service is the third theme. Highly satisfying incidents represent pleasant surprises for the customer (special attention, being treated like royal etc.) whereas highly dissatisfying incidents represent negative & unacceptable employee behaviour (like rudeness, discrimination, ignoring the customer).
4. Coping: (Employees response to problem customer) There are some customers who will be uncooperative to the service provider & would not respect the rules & regulations or would not care for other customers’ inconvenience. Such type of customers causes their own dissatisfaction & discomfort to other customers.

Thus in the interactive marketing, service encounter or the moment of truth is where the value to the customer is created in the service delivery process. At this stage all the efforts of internal and external marketing will be reflected.