MRKT 4503 Week 4 Customer Listening Study Example

Hearing the Learners Who Never Call: A Listening Study Setting Out Five Channels for a Driving School, Coding What Each Captures Against SERVQUAL's Five Dimensions and Naming Who Stays Unheard

Student Name

Walden University

MRKT 4503: Strategic Services Marketing

Instructor Name

Month Day, Year

Hearing the Learners Who Never Call: A Listening Study Setting Out Five Channels for a Driving School, Coding What Each Captures Against SERVQUAL's Five Dimensions and Naming Who Stays Unheard

The Problem of Silence

Unhappy learners at Steady Wheel Driving School rarely phone the office. They finish a package without comment, or stop halfway, and book a road test or more lessons elsewhere. The school's complaint log recorded only 23 complaints last year from roughly 1,400 learners, which almost certainly understates dissatisfaction. Voorhees et al. (2006) studied customers who experienced service problems and did not complain, and found that this silent group was large and that many of them reduced their patronage or switched providers anyway. The school needs ways of hearing them. This study sets out five listening channels, codes a composite sample of what each would capture and names who would still go unheard.

Five Listening Channels

Table 1

Listening Channels for the School

Composite school.

Coding a Sample

Parasuraman et al. (1988) built SERVQUAL on five dimensions, running from the look of facilities and staff (tangibles) through dependability, promptness and competence to individual care. A composite sample of forty comments, paraphrased from what each channel would plausibly capture in a month, was coded against them.

Table 2

Composite Sample of Forty Comments by SERVQUAL Dimension and Channel

Composite and illustrative. Comments are paraphrased, not quotations from real customers.

What the Coding Shows

Reliability is the most frequent concern across channels, chiefly late pickups and the gap between the six-lesson promise and readiness. Assurance comes next, centered on how calm and competent instructors seem in traffic. The two channels differ in what they reveal. Exit calls and instructor notes surface empathy concerns that reviews and texts rarely do: a learner who felt rushed, a parent who did not understand why extra lessons were suggested. The mystery booking is the only channel that captures the experience of booking and arranging a first pickup, where responsiveness and tangibles problems appear.

No single channel captures everything. Reviews favor strong views, texts favor immediate reactions and exit calls favor reasons for leaving. Run side by side, the channels fill one another's blind spots. Zeithaml et al. (2018) recommend a mix of listening methods for exactly this reason, since each samples a different group of customers at a different moment.

Who Is Still Unheard

Three groups remain largely unheard. Parents who pay but never ride along rarely receive the lesson texts and are not reached by exit calls, which go to learners. Adult learners who are embarrassed about learning late may not say what bothers them, even when asked. And learners who failed their road test at another testing center after leaving Steady Wheel are invisible to the school. The study recommends adding a short text to parents after the third and sixth lessons, which would reach the first group at little cost. The other two groups may stay partly unheard; the school should acknowledge that its picture is incomplete rather than treat silence as satisfaction.

Costs and First Steps

All five channels can run with existing staff and tools, at a total of about six hours a week across the three branches. The study recommends starting with the lesson texts and exit calls, which address the reliability and empathy concerns most directly, and adding the mystery booking at the end of the first quarter.

References

Parasuraman, A., Zeithaml, V. A., & Berry, L. L. (1988). SERVQUAL: A multiple-item scale for measuring consumer perceptions of service quality. Journal of Retailing, 64(1), 12-40.

Voorhees, C. M., Brady, M. K., & Horowitz, D. M. (2006). A voice from the silent masses: An exploratory and comparative analysis of noncomplainers. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 34(4), 514-527. https://doi.org/10.1177/0092070306288762

Zeithaml, V. A., Bitner, M. J., & Gremler, D. D. (2018). Services marketing: Integrating customer focus across the firm (7th ed.). McGraw-Hill Education.