Search results for "Service Quality"
showing 10 items of 127 documents
The Structure and Formation of Customer value in B-to-B Services
2017
This study investigates the hierarchical construct and the formation of customer value of b-to-b services. In-depth understanding of the construction of customer value and the effects of service quality on customer value are the key to effective development of b-to-b services. This quantitative study was conducted through the structured interview method among Finnish business organizations in early 2009. The data consisted of 90 qualified questionnaires. The customer value of b-to-b services was found to be composed of attribute and consequence levels. The dimensions of service quality influenced to differing degrees the formation of the attribute and consequence levels of the customer valu…
Issues in Software Inspection Practices
2005
The motivation for this research comes from a need to improve software inspection practices in software organizations. Even if inspections are well defined and regularly used in an organization, there may be some problems which can greatly reduce inspection effectiveness. The paper presents a list of inspection related problems which are known in the literature. It also relates some experiences from two case organizations. In addition, this paper provides an approach which helps identifying problems of this kind and directing limited improvement resources effectively.
Estimating the cost of improving service quality in water supply: A shadow price approach for England and wales
2015
Service quality to customers is an aspect that cannot be ignored in the performance assessment of water companies. Nowadays water regulators introduce awards or penalties to incentivize companies to improve service quality to customers when setting prices. In this study, the directional distance function is employed to estimate the shadow prices of variables indicating the lack of service quality to customers in the water industry i.e., written complaints, unplanned interruptions and properties below the reference level. To calculate the shadow price of each undesirable output for each water company, it is needed to ascribe a reference price for the desirable output which is the volume of w…
The Rail Quality Index as an Indicator of the “Global Comfort” in Optimizing Safety, Quality and Efficiency in Railway Rails
2012
AbstractThe proposed model uses the stochastic dynamic programming and in particular Markov decision processes applied to the Rail Quality Index (RQI - Italian Indice di Qualità del Binario, IQB).By performing the integrated analysis of the classes of variables which characterize the overall service quality (in terms of comfort and safety), the proposed mathematical approach allows to find the solutions to the decision-making process in function of the probability of deterioration of the state variables of the infrastructure over time and of the flow of available resources.
Asymmetry in inter-municipal cooperation in health services - How does it affect service quality and autonomy?
2021
Throughout Europe, local health services are increasingly being provided through various forms of inter-municipal cooperation (IMC). One of the most common forms of IMC is when small municipalities delegate the operational responsibility for providing health services to a larger host municipality. However, despite the size asymmetry usually inherent in this type of IMC, this aspect has largely been neglected in the existing literature, which mainly focuses on the size of individual municipalities. Based on data from 97 partner municipalities and 25 host municipalities in Norway, this study examines how varying degrees of size asymmetry between them affect the perceived service quality and l…
Interaction between functional and relational service quality: hierarchy vs. compensation
2018
The main goal of this research study is to examine the form of interaction between functional and relational service quality in their links to customer satisfaction. Two competing hypotheses were t...
Assessing the quality of service to customers provided by water utilities: A synthetic index approach
2017
Abstract Currently, water and sewer companies face the challenge of improving their quality of service to customers (QSC). Performance indicators are essential to monitor and benchmark the QSC of water companies; however, individual indicators do not provide a holistic evaluation of the quality of water and sewer services provided to customers. This study proposes an innovative QSC index based on distance-function techniques that makes it possible to compare changes in the QSC of water companies among locations and temporal periods. A case study assesses changes in QSC for a sample of Chilean water and sewer companies from 2007 to 2014. The results show that in spite of the efforts made by …
The Assessment of Perceived Service Quality of Public Health Care Services in Romania Using the SERVQUAL Scale
2013
Abstract The objective of this paper is to explore the application of the original SERVQUAL scale in the context of public health care services in Romania. More specifically, we implemented the SERVQUAL scale in order to uncover whether it fits as the original version or adjustments should be done and to define the demographic profiles of health care consumers who use public services in Romania. We have selected our sample respondents from a list of a gynaecological health care forum members, namely women from Bucharest who should have posted messages on the chosen forum no more than three months before the study was conducted and the messages should have comprised their experiences with ce…
Service quality and the optimum number of members in intermunicipal cooperation: The case of emergency primary care services in Norway
2021
Intermunicipal cooperation (IMC) is often used as a mean to reap scale benefits. Most studies on the effects of IMC focus on cost savings, while service quality is overlooked. In this study, the focus is set on input quality in a service characterized by high asset specificity and need for redundancy: emergency primary care. We analyze how mode of governance affect performance by (1) measuring whether IMC versus single-municipal production affects input quality and (2) identifying optimum scale of operation; effect of the number of participants in the cooperation on input quality. The findings indicate that cooperation weakens the input quality of medical workforce, but that this negative e…
RETRACTED: Measuring Service Quality in Tourism Industry
2016
Abstract The expansion of the service sector, the stronger competition resulting from globalization and deregulation, and the emergence of new information technologies have accelerated the shift toward a knowledge-based and innovation-driven economy. With the increasing role of tourism in global economy and the growing competition in the global tourism market, the importance of developing quality tourism products has been recognized by both the public and the private tourism sectors. In order to develop quality tourism, organizations need to know what their competitive advantage is and what capabilities they need to grow and maintain. The aim of this paper is to analyze the customer satisfa…