My Best Friend's Wedding - Personal Essay

• Analyze a recent experience that you have had with a service business (for example, a hairdresser, movie theater, car repair, or restaurant) in terms of your expectations and perceptions about each of the five components of service quality--reliability, responsiveness, assurance, empathy, and tangibles.

I was recently the Maid of Honor in my best friend’s wedding. This ceremony opened my eyes to multiple examples of service businesses, but I personally only took part in a few of the services. The service that I will explain is having my hair and makeup done. I had never been to this particular salon but the bride and her mother had done business with them for many years. I am sure that the bride and her mother had different expectations of the service quality than the bridesmaids and I. My main expectations were to have my hair curled, have my airbrushed makeup done, pay a reasonable amount, and have service completed by 10:30 AM. The ceremony was scheduled for 1:00 PM but the priest requested for the bridal party to arrive at the church for 12:10 PM which meant that the bridal party was running a tight schedule. We had to have our salon service completed by 10:30 AM so we could put on our dresses, munch on a snack, and take a few pictures while waiting on the limo. Overall, the bridal party was expecting a fair service quality and there is no doubt that the salon outperformed our expectations of the five components of service quality.

We booked appointments about three months ahead of time for 7:00 AM on the wedding morning. The week of the appointment, the salon followed up with each of us to ensure that the time suited all of our needs and that there would be enough beauticians available to complete the services in a timely yet satisfying manner. This is an example of reliability being the salon opened early as well as pre-called to obtain our customer needs in order to offer the service to us as we intended. Surprisingly each beautician had their stations ready to suit the five of us as we walked in around 6:50 AM. This is an example of responsiveness being they were fully prepared to offer us the services in order to have us done by 10:30 AM like we intended. They also each offered us breakfast and continued to offer us something to drink as we were settled in our salon chairs. This is an example of empathy being they were aware of our stress, exhaustion, and tight schedule. Each employee was willing to do all they could to give us individualized attention to help our day be as memorable as possible. Each beautician also had an organized station with their business cards. They even responded to us in a confident manner as we requested certain hairdos. This gave me assurance that they were skilled employees and that they could be trusted to provide us all with a good quality of service for this special occasion. The salon was fully equipped with enough salon chairs, curling irons, bobby pins, straighteners,