SERVQUAL A Client-based Approach to Developing Performance Indicators Colleen Cook, Vicki Coleman, and Fred Heath

1 SERVQUAL: A Client-based Approach to Developing Performance Indicators Colleen Cook, Vicki Coleman, and Fred Heath 3rd Northumbria International Conference on Performance Measurement in Libraries and Information Services, 27-31 August 1999 Abstract The Sterling C Evans Libraries at Texas A&M University administered the SERVQUAL survey to university users in 1995, 1997 and 1999 SERVQUAL is a gap model for assessing service quality Reliability, or internal consistency, of scores for all three years was evaluated by computing Cronbach’s alpha coefficients, and construct validity was evaluated with a factor analysis Specific issues of strategic interest for local library administrators are considered at the individual question level Additionally, a specific analytical model, Six Sigma, is evaluated for its applicability for quantifying the gap Future applications for the use of SERVQUAL in identifying best practices among research libraries are explored 2 SERVQUAL: A Client-based Approach to Developing Performance Indicators Colleen Cook, Vicki Coleman, and Fred Heath 3rd Northumbria International Conference on Performance Measurement in Libraries and Information Services, 27-31 August 1999 Background As the Academy of Marketing Science celebrated the 10th anniversary of SERVQUAL in 1998, Terry Grapentine, the symposium’s organizer, opened the meeting quoting Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar: “There is a tide in the affairs of men, which, taken at the flood, leads onto fortune." He explained: In the early 1980s, concerns about customer satisfaction and product quality became emerging tides in the affairs of industry and academia And in the early 1980s, three academicians boarded their service quality boat and rode the tide And what a ride they had Their work not only spawned numerous articles, books, conference presentations, and consulting engagements, but also significantly affected how many organizations went about measuring service quality (Grapentine, p 4) In their landmark papers, "A Conceptual Model of Service Quality and Its Implications for Future Research," (1985), and “SERVQUAL: A Multiple-item Scale for Measuring Customer Perceptions of Service Quality” (1988), A Parasuraman, Leonard Berry, and Valarie Zeithaml proposed a Gap Model for assessing service quality According to the authors, the key to optimizing service quality is to maximize the difference between two customer-derived measures, perceptions and expectations The associated Gap equation, (Q= P – E), became an e=mc2 analog for service marketing enthusiasts 3 As service providers, the Gap Model was immediately and intuitively appealing to research librarians in North America Librarians had struggled for some time to augment the tried and true production oriented statistics represented in ARL Statistics with service assessments (Andaleeb and Simmonds, 1998; Coleman et al, 1997; Nitecki, 1996a, 1996b, 1998; Stein, 1998) Over the past several years the Association of Research Libraries has confronted the potential divergence between statistical measurement of expenditures for ranking purposes and the need for additional measures to assess outcomes From an ARL retreat held in Tucson in January, 1999 emerged a dedicated effort to develop the data and measurement tools that could accurately describe today’s research libraries (ARL New Measures: 2) A recent call by the Association of Research Libraries’ (ARL) Board for new measures for determining library performance included user satisfaction as one of eight areas of focus for study Although the use of SERVQUAL to assess service quality in library settings has been the subject of several studies, to date there has not been a report of comparisons of SERVQUAL results over multiple years in academic libraries The General Libraries of Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas was a SERVQUAL pioneer in administering the survey in 1995 and has surveyed users subsequently each two years in 1997 and in 1999 Our analysis of SERVQUAL considers both issues generalizable to academic libraries as a whole, and local, strategic issues of use in managerial decisions at the institution level, in our case, the General Libraries at Texas A&M University General issues include: • Are SERVQUAL scores valid and reliable? • (Are there statistically significant differences between years and among user groups by year? Specific issues of strategic interest for local library administrators are considered at the individual question level, particularly : • What are the six most/least important questions for users? • Are most/least important minimum, desired and perceived expectations the same from year to year? • What obvious gaps in service quality, i.e., differences between minimum and perceived expectations exist? The SERVQUAL instrument used at Texas A&M consisted of 22 questions and a set of questions that were used to assign weights, or relative importance, to the larger question set As shown in Table respondents answered each question on three scales: minimum, desired and perceived ratings on a Likert-type scale of (lowest) to (highest) An identical instrument was used for each of the three assessments in 1995, 1997 and 1999 Samples of staff, faculty, undergraduate and graduate students were derived on a random basis from university student registration and payroll databases The survey was mailed to respondents with standard follow up procedures A total sample of nearly 700 responses for the three years was analyzed Q.1 Q.2 Q.3 Q.4 Q.5 Q.6 Q.7 Q.8 Q.9 Q.10 Q.11 Q.12 Q.13 Prompt service to customers Employees who are consistently courteous Employees who deal with customers in a caring fashion Providing service at the promised time Employees who understand the needs of their customers Visually appealing materials associated with the service (e.g., clear and concise forms) Having the customer’s best interest at heart Willingness to help customers Maintaining error-free customer and catalog records Keeping customers informed about when services will be performed Providing services as promised Employees who instill confidence in customers Knowledge who have the knowledge to answer customers’ questions Q.14 Q.15 Q.16 Q.17 Q.18 Q.19 Q.20 Q.21 Q.22 Readiness to respond to customers’ questions Dependability in handling customers’ service problems Performing services right the first time Visually appealing facilities Giving customers individual attention Employees who have a neat, professional appearance Convenient business hours Modern equipment Assure customers of the accuracy and confidentiality of their transactions Table General Issues Are SERVQUAL scores valid and reliable? Reliability, or internal consistency, of SERVQUAL scores for all three years was evaluated by computing Cronbach’s alpha coefficients, which were uniformly high across various scales, years and user groups Construct validity was evaluated with a factor analysis of SERVQUAL scores to determine whether we were accurately testing the five dimensions intended by the originators of the instrument (i.e., tangibles, reliability, responsiveness, assurance and empathy) In similar results to those reported by Nitecki (1996) and Andaleeb and Simmonds (1998), our factor analysis identified three rather than five factors: •Affect of Service Experience, which is primarily a confluence of the responsiveness, assurance and empathy dimensions; •Service Reliability, fairly analogous to the reliability dimension; and •Tangibles (Cook and Thompson, 1999) Were there noteworthy differences between results by year or by role group? Analysis of variance (ANOVA) tests for minimum, desired and perceived expectations at the dimension and item level by year yielded little statistically significant data and when p