Service Quality: Servequal
ABSTRACT
Service quality is a concept that has stimulated considerable interest and debate in the research literature because of the difficulties in both defining and measuring it. Customer satisfaction and service quality always treated together as customer’s perception and expectation, and the gap will show the result of the total satisfaction. The aim of the study is to rank the 5 dimensions of the service quality to measure the service quality of hospitals in larkana with the help of SERVEQUAL Model.
This study also examines the Service quality gap by measuring the gap between Hospital’s patient’s expectations and perceptions. This research shows that all the dimensions of the service are very much important for the service quality. Tangibility was rated as the most important dimension followed by assurance, reliability, responsiveness and empathy. The questionnaire used for this study was “SERVICE Quality: SERVEQUAL (Parasuraman, Zeithaml, and Berry 1986, 1988)”. The measurements used were on the basis of SERVEQUAL Model which is the best way to measure the service quality.
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This study state that the expectations were so much high but the perceptions are not that much strong and there is a huge gap between Patient’s Expectations and perception. Key words: Service quality, Customer satisfaction, perception and expectation, gap, Tangibility, assurance, reliability, responsiveness empathy. Introduction SERVEQUAL model is a method to measure a service quality. It was created in 1980’s especially for the projects related to marketing to find the perception of customer regarding the service quality.
In SERVEQUAL, quality is defined through the gap or space which customer got and perceive regarding the service quality. It’s very difficult to understand and measure the service quality, especially in the field of service providers in health care field and if we talk about the larkana than its more complex that’s why I choose the SERVEQUAL model to measure the service quality of Larkana hospitals and medical centers to know the effect of service quality on the customer perception.
This research examines the measurement of service quality in hospitals of larkana, through the help of SERVEQUAL model to know, what are the gaps between, the service perceived and got by the customers or patients in the larkana. Service quality is all about ensuring customers, both internal and external, get what they want. Customer satisfaction is a attitude or feeling of customer toward the service after using the service. Satisfaction and service quality is always treated together to know the perception.
Satisfaction is defining customer perception and expectation, customer satisfactions is determined by defining customer perception of quality, expectation and preferences. It’s always arises a important question that why we measure the service quality? Because the measurement of service quality, is a comparison of before and after changes for the service quality. It also gives the solution of the problem for the betterment of service delivery standard.
The main purpose of this research is to find the most important service quality dimensions that affect the customer satisfactions in hospitals in larkana, by using the SERVEQUAL model which is the best way to measure the service quality. Measuring the service quality is very crucial for the hospitals today, to improve the quality and image of the hospital, to study the importance and impact of service quality of hospitals on patients, to find the important dimensions of service quality which effect on customer satisfactions in hospitals and to determine customer need in their treatment in hospitals in larkana.
In last few decades the importance of service quality has increased and every industries and departments are trying to find the reasons which effect the customer perception and satisfaction, and trying to give better quality that’s why this research is also very important to measure the service quality of hospitals via SERVEQUAL model. SERVEQUAL breaks service quality in five basic dimensions, Reliability, assurance, tangibles, understanding and responsiveness.
So in this research these five dimensions are also considered and examine to measure the service quality and factors which effect the perception of customer towards the service quality. Literature review: This part gives you an overview of literature about the models related to the problem statement which discussed in introduction. In this we study about the concept of customer satisfaction, service quality, relation between customer satisfaction and service quality and its effect on consumer mind, traditional service quality dimensions and hospital’s service quality in order to give a clear idea about the research area.
As it is discussed by Kotler (2003); there is a general agreement that: Satisfaction is a person’s feelings of pleasure or disappointment resulting from comparing a product’s perceived performance (outcome) in relation to his or her expectations. Based on this review, customer satisfaction is defined as the result of a cognitive and addictive evaluation, where some comparison standard is compared to the actually perceived performance.
Furthermore, Omachonu (1990); stated that Health care quality has been posited to consist of two parts: quality in fact and quality as perceived by the consumer. Means how actually customer perceived the service quality and how its experience during the availing of the service, and every customer having its own perception. Another side it is argued that satisfaction is associated with performance that fulfils the expectation, while dissatisfaction occurs when performance falls below the expectation (Swan and combs 1976).
This review based that when the service quality meet the customer expectation they satisfy and when service quality doesn’t meet with the customer expectation they got dissatisfied and they never avail that service, means there is a huge relation between the service quality on customer perception, because when customer once satisfy from the service quality he/she again avail that service because he make his mind set about that particular industry.
Health care practitioners would contend that service quality is a provision of appropriate and technically sound care that produces the desire affect; however it has been misperceive their patient’s perception sometimes (McAlexander et al 1994).
Means the service providers in hospital industry always trying to introduce new technologies to give the good service quality to their patients to change their mind and perception and to satisfy them by meet their expectation but sometimes some patients misperceive it and take it in a another side which is a loss for the hospitals, that’s why it is always difficult to measure the service quality specially in the field of hospital industry but it’s important for every department and industry now. As Dr. K.
Ravichandran et al (2010) defining that every retail industries are consequently directing their strategies towards increasing service quality level which fosters customer satisfaction and loyalty improved service quality. He further discussed that; increase in service quality in retail industry can develop customer satisfaction which ultimately retains valued customer. It review stated that in today’s era its very much important for any organization or any industry to increase service quality and do work according the customer expectation than any organization can got success in business world and through this a organization can retail the oyal and valuable customer. James H. mcAlexendar (1994) discussed in his research that marketer generally view the service quality from the perspective of health care customers because marketers understand that patients perception of service quality may be more broadly constructed than those of the health care provider and based upon a more holistic assessment of the health care experience. Because patient’s perspective regarding service quality may include perception of technical care but also seemingly peripheral concerns as physical facilities, interactions with receptionists and even brochures.
It argued by the Kekale (2001) that it is some how the measurement of customer dissatisfaction and offers a possibility for the elimination of falls, not a possibility for product development and product innovation. Companies should gather and analyze the suitable data, which will provide relevant information to real customer satisfaction. It is important to measure the right things, i. e. what is really important for the Customers. There is the possibility of wrong specifications or misinterpretations of what a customer actually wants.
Means the gap between what companies think and what actually customer wants can also affect the service quality. It is not always be true that performance will equal to expectation as described in International journal of nursing studies (2007) that performance was relatively lower than expectations, resulting in poor nursing care quality. Differences between expectations and performance for both patients and nurses need to be further reduced. As its also discussed by the Tolgo taner et al (1997) that there is different service quality provided in private and public sector.
He further discussed that inpatients in the private hospital were more satisfied with service quality than those in public hospitals. The result also suggest that patients in private hospitals were more satisfied with doctors, nuerses and supportive than their counterparts in public hospitals. One research suggest that customers are reluctant to complain when dissatisfied with professional and when they dissatisfied they tell to more customers means it become the word of mouth. Andreasen et al 1985). This result could be the health care professional would bear the burden of having dissatisfied patients, including negative word of mouth and patient turn over. IMPORTANCE of the Research: A good research is effective tool for reader and for a society for many positive changes in the environment. Especially, if we talk about the service oriented organization than we come to know that the base for their success is that they study well about their customers.
So this research is helpful to know that how much there is a gap between the customer perception and expectation and how much they get satisfied after availing the service of hospitals located in the larkana. This study is especially design to measure the service quality of hospitals in the Larkana. This research is also important study for to know that which are the drawbacks in private hospital sector and are customers (patients) are satisfied or not? This study is important for doctors to know that what patients want from them and how some changes can improve their quality for their customers.
We can simply define a service quality with the help of people expectation and perception about a certain field. As much as the gap is high the service quality is negative, but if there is a low gap or expectation and perception are equal it means there is a good service quality. This study is also done for the purpose to find and measure the service quality of hospitals in the larkana, with the help of SERVEQUAL Model, which is the worldwide best way to measure the SERVICE quality.
The main purpose of conducted this study is to know the overall performance of the private hospitals. Because it’s very necessary that customer should be satisfied from the services than they can become the loyal with that particular industry or company. After conducting this research we come to know that there is still a huge gap between the expectations of the patients and the perception that they have perceived from the hospital, so it clearly shows the performance of hospitals in larkana.
The other main drawback is that hospital’s are not understanding the basically needs of the customer, they shouldn’t provide them those services effectively which customer want from them. So we can conclude that maintain the service quality is very necessary for every organization especially in the field of medical, but in Larkana after doing the research we come to know that still there is a huge gap between expectation and perception and the overall services of hospitals are not up to that level and still they need to improve a lot to satisfy their customers (Patients).
BIBLIOGRAPHY
- http://www. serviceperformance. com/articles/33_Five_Service_Dimensions.php
- http://www. proserv. nu/Docs/Servqual.pdf
- http://eprints. utm. my/9514/1/SeyedHosseinSiadatMFSKSM2008.pdf
- http://www. fm-kp. si/zalozba/ISSN/1854-4231/5_195-209.pdf
- http://www. journal-archieves14. webs.com/1397-1408. pdf http://www. eurojournals. com/IBBA_11_10.pdf
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Service Quality: Servequal. (2017, Apr 22). Retrieved from https://phdessay.com/service-quality-servequal/
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