Service Operations Management
...reviation of service quality, is probably one of the best known instruments for assessing service quality. By this you mean, taking into account the 18 quality factors, which the customer identified as being important in focus groups. ‘ SERVQUAL is a concise multiple-item scale questionnaire that organisations can use to assess their customers’ expectations and perceptions of their service and obtain a single figure for tracking and comparison.’ (1*) The SERVQUAL model is based on a questionnaire that enables managers of an organisation to question customers about their expectations and perceptions of the services that are being provided by a particular company. It does this by using five quality factors which are - Tangibles: appearance of physical facilities, equipment, personnel, and communication materials; Reliability: ability to perform the promised service dependably and accurately; Responsiveness: willingness to help customers and provide prompt service; Assurance: knowledge and courtesy of employees and their ability to convey trust and confidence; and Empathy: the caring, individualized attention the firm provides its customers. Using 22 items for perception and 22 items for expectation the SERVQUAL model is then used to calculate a perception gap score for both of the statements. It does this by going with the 18 quality factors which I have defined in the appendix. (2*) Service quality is generally viewed as the output of the service delivery system, especially in the case of pure service systems. Moreover, service quality is linked to consumer satisfaction. Although there is no consensus in the research community about the direction of causality relating quality and satisfaction, the common consumption is that service quality leads to satisfied customers. For example customers leaving a restaurant or hotel are asked if they were satisfied with the service they received. If they answer ’no’ we tend to assume that the service was poor. Direct service providers such as waitresses, also note that at times the best service efforts are criticised because the customers perceptions of the service are clouded by being in a bad mood or having a disagreement with someone just before arriving at the restaurant. These service providers recognise that in practice the influence of service quality on customer satisfaction is effected by other factors, one of which is the customers themselves. 3.) Having analysed the data from the case study of the North County Breast Screening Unit (3*)I have made six tables which have given me a quality gap ranking. The rankings have been ordered from one being the best and eleven being the worst. For instance the data has been analysed by comparing the differences between the patients and nurses, patients and radiographer, and patients and manager. You can see what the ranking order is in the table which has been referenced. Seeing who perceives what and how they perceive it compared to there expectations of what actually happened leaves you with the quality gap. As you can see by looking at the Nurses table compared with the screened patients that functionality is something that the nurses need to work on as they are scoring fairly low in this. The data for each table has also been ranked so that it may show as to what areas need to be worked on and how they can be worked on it. The nurses compared to screened patients score highly on responsiveness, courtesy and competence compared with diagnosed patients where nurses score highly on functionality, responsiveness and reliability. The tables have been ranked so that it can seen what are the ares that are most important going up to the area that is least important. Please have a look at the appendix in order to see the tables and rankings. (4*) 4.) a.) I am going to compare and contrast the two types of patients - diagnosed and screened - by having a look at how the staff compare to each of the patients. When the table was evaluated and put into ranking compared with nurse you could see that for the diagnosed patient Functionality was the highest of the ranking orders followed by responsiveness and then reliability. When you look at the screened patients you can see that Responsiveness of nurses was the highest ranking in order followed by courtesy and then competence. Straight away you can tell how the two types of patients reacted differently. Nurse understand patients as in that they are Responsive and Functional to there needs as this is one of the highest scoring in both sets of patients but work can be done on Privacy and Comfort as it scores low in both tables. A diagnosed patient when being treated by a nurse ranks there functionality as being the highest whereas a screened patient perceives functionality as being the worst. This could be due to the diagnosed patient already being made aware that she has some form of breast cancer therefore her perceptions have already been made up to a certain extent and she is only looking at the way the nurses are there to help her making the responsiveness of the nurses the highest. Comparing this to a patient that has come in for screening functionality is something that from there view needs to be worked on - this could be due to the fact that a screened patient might just not like the fact that they are being screened in the first place or maybe the service being provided is being perceived in a different way to them making the judgement very biased and one sided. If you have a look at the two sets of data given for the priorities and perceptions of the patients you can see the final gap in the table (5*). When this data is ranked in order it shows the differences in the patients perception and there priorities. The patients that have been diagnosed have a ranking that shows that Courtesy, Privacy and Responsibility come in the top three respectively. The ranked order for screene...