The SRA Symposium - College of Medicine

The adaptation of SERVQUAL is dependent on two variables: expected service and perceived service.
The two variables are compared so that the ‘perceived service quality’ is interpreted from the
differences in degree and direction between perceptions and expectations.
The inaugural survey of external clients was conducted in March 2001, where a response rate of
around 40% was achieved. Subsequent factor and other analysis on the 2001 data set resulted in
improvements to the questionnaire, which included the identification of three industry specific dimensions
of service quality, these were categorised as ‘product/service delivery’, ‘human resources’
and ‘assurance and reliability’.
Each year since, the Research and Innovation Services Office has contracted an independent
research centre elsewhere in UniSA that specialises in these types of surveys to survey our clients
under the guidance of a pre-determined set of criteria. The response rate during the last four years
has ranged from 34 to 40 per cent.
The first two years annual surveys looked only at UniSA’s service delivery. The project has since
extended to include other like institutions. The main advantage of extending the survey to several
institutions was that it enabled benchmarking and identified areas of best practice. Each participating
organisation thus receives an individual report with their results and a separate section
where these are compared to the benchmark average.
Since continuous improvement is a key theme in ISO9001:2000 it is not enough just to measure
customer satisfaction - the standard requires the level of satisfaction to be improved. There are 15
individual attributes measured – complete list can be obtained from the author. This paper now
examines a small sample of survey results listing areas that are considered to be strengths and
areas that require monitoring or attention. Furthermore it explores an area that was highlighted as
‘requiring further attention’ and explains how the process was identified and improved.
The attribute below (Figure 2) is the “summary” attribute, i.e. “overall satisfaction”
Papers
Figure 2. The measurement shows that overall satisfaction with UniSA has increased (6.00 in 2004
from a maximum of 7.00) from the previous surveys (5.91 &5.65). This is considered a strength as
overall satisfaction has increased consistently over a three year period.
Similarly, another positive attribute (Figure 3) is that of “recommendation to others”
2005 Symposium Proceedings Book 91