“Purchasing’s Performance as
Seen by its Internal Customers:
A Study in a Service
Organization”
by Jimmy Alyea
SERVQUAL is a “gap” survey
model that defines service quality by
the difference or “gap” between what customers feel a service should offer
(their expectations) and their perceptions
of the actual performance, based on five service quality dimensions: reliability, responsiveness, assurance,
empathy, and tangibles. If the numerical
score on a generic Likert-type scale for perceptions meets or exceeds the score
for expectations, the customer service experience is considered positive. Conversely, negative numbers indicate
improvement is needed. Service quality
measured in this way is an attitude or a value judgment of a service rather
than an objective assessment based on measurable standards.
Purpose.
Service quality as seen by external customers of an
organization has been a focus of research since the 1980s. The SERVQUAL survey instrument was developed using
22 items describing five service quality dimensions to determine service
characteristics that are important to “external” customers of retail businesses. Limited research had been done on using the
SERVQUAL model to study the service quality experienced by “internal” customers
of an organization. This research study is important because of the increasing
emphasis on the benefits of Total Quality Management (TQM). This article describes a study to determine
if SERVQUAL’s five dimensions of service quality are useful in measuring the qualities
of service provided to internal
customers in the purchasing department of a service organization.
Research method.
To determine if the SERVQUAL model holds true for internal
customers, 132 questionnaires, describing 22 service-quality characteristics,
were sent to internal customers of the purchasing department of a major
university in the Midwest. The response
rate was 61 percent or 80 usable questionnaires. Respondents rated the overall importance of
the five service quality dimensions, and then were asked to rate each
individual characteristic of the five qualities for an “ideal” purchasing
department and for the university’s purchasing department. The difference between the two was calculated
to determine the service gap score of each item. Both a
mean gap score for individual characteristics and a gap score, each weighted by
the overall dimension importance to the respondents, were obtained.
Results.
The authors’ initial results indicate that all five
dimensions apply to internal as well as external customers and can be useful to
purchasing department managers to identify “perceived” shortcomings of the
department. The results of the
individual items assessed for an ideal purchasing department generally corresponded
to the respondents’ overall assessment of the importance of each the five
service quality dimensions. Reliability is identified as the most
important dimension with a 33 percent mean score, followed by responsiveness at 23 percent; assurance, 20 percent; empathy, 15 percent; and tangibles, 9 percent. A comparison of the respondents’ expectations
of an “ideal” department’s service characteristics with their perceptions of
the “actual” service delivered showed a “service gap” for all characteristics. However, the scores are toward the positive
end of the scale, indicating that overall most internal customers felt that the
department was doing a reasonably good job in meeting their service needs.
Conclusions.
Cautions and questions about using the SERQUAL instrument by
a purchasing department to obtain service
feedback from internal customers include defining what score constitutes an acceptable gap and what
actions may be taken to close an unacceptable one, as well as setting a general
tolerance level cutoff for service items that need to be improved. Previous service quality surveys may be used
to help establish a tolerance level and a benchmark. The process for interpreting the results
should be clearly defined and a schedule set for regular review of service
quality using SERVQUAL along with more traditional survey formats. These decisions should be made before the SERVQUAL
instrument is administered, keeping in mind that even the best departments may
never be able to achieve the “ideal.”
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Case Study Reference:
“Purchasing's Performance as Seen by its Internal Customers: A Study in a Service Organization”
by Joyce A. Young and Dale L. Varble, Aug., 1997
International Journal
of Purchasing and Materials Management
Jimmy Alyea, Supply Chain, Jimmy Alyea, Eclat, Inc., Jimmy Alyea, Advertising, Jimmy Alyea, Bernard Hodes Group, Jimmy Alyea, Marketing,
Jimmy Alyea, Procurement, Jimmy Alyea, MBA, Jimmy Alyea, Logistics, James Alyea, Houston, TX
