Service Quality Surveys

Service Quality Surveys

Many organizations struggle with measuring service quality appropriately. The most popular survey form is based on five dimensions that are “consistently ranked by customers to be most important for service quality, regardless of service industry” (Qualtrics, 2015, para. 1). The dimensions are tangibles, reliability, responsiveness, assurance, and empathy. These dimensions are utilized to measure the gap between customer expectations and the perception of actual service delivery. This method of measurement, when used effectively, can benefit any company in many ways. This measurement tool is called SERVQUAL. Unfortunately, the effectiveness of service quality surveys are only utilized to their fullest when developing a consistent and ongoing information system that identifies consumers’ points of view, experiences, and feedback from many different points in time. This creates better understanding, a clearer vision, and more informed decision-making, furthering adequate recovery processes.

SERVQUAL

SERVQUAL is a 22/22-item scale that measures five factors of service quality: reliability, responsiveness, assurance, empathy, and tangibles. This diagnostic tool determines the service quality strengths and weaknesses of an organization. There are two parts to the SERVQUAL measurement tool, hence the “22/22”: 22 questions that ask for expectations, and 22 questions that gauge perceptions. The gap score is created when the average expectation score is subtracted from the average perception score. Positive gaps equal satisfied customers and service quality exceeds expectations. A gap of zero means that companies are meeting expectations, and negative gaps obviously show that consumers are unhappy and perceptions are far below expectations (Sureshchandar, Rajendran, & Anantharaman, 2002; Hoffman & Bateson, 2011).

A huge advantage of the SERVQUAL instrument is the general agreement that the items included are “reasonably good...