Measuring Service Quality Using SERVQUAL

Following are the instructions for using the SERVQUAL questionnaire discussed in the chapter on quality. It refers to ‘CompanyX’ as the company to be studied. On the questionnaire, just replace the word CompanyX with the business (profit or non-profit) being analyzed. You can derive an un-weighted gap score or a weighted gap score. Weighting depends upon how you allocate 100 points among the five SERVQUAL categories. A modified use of the questionnaire is to limit it to just the total or average Perception score. This is called SERVPERF and is used when Expectations are likely to be all the same (typically high). Weights can be applied here as well.

STEPS TO OBTAIN UNWEIGHTED SERVQUAL SCORE

Step 1. Select a business the service quality of which you want to assess. Using the SERVQUAL instrument, first obtain the score for each of the 22 expectation questions. Next, obtain a core for each of the perception questions. Calculate the Gap Score each of the statements (Gap Score = Perception – Expectation).

Step 2. Obtain an average Gap Score for each dimension by assessing the Gap Scores for each of the statements that constitute the dimension and dividing the sum by the number of statements making up the dimension.

Step 3. In TABLE 1 transfer the average dimension SERVQUAL scores (for all five dimensions) from the SERVQUAL instrument. Sum up the scores and divide it by five to obtain the unweighted measure of service quality.

STEPS TO OBTAIN THE WEIGHTED SERVQUAL SCORE

Step 1. In Table 2 calculate the importance weights for each of the five dimensions constituting the SERVQUAL scale. (The instructions are provided along with the table).

Step 2. In Table 3 enter the average SERVQUAL score for each dimension (from Table 1) and the importance weight for each dimension (from Table 2). Then