Public Sector Entities Urged to Monitor Customer Satisfaction

Contractor General, Derrick McKoy is appealing to public sector entities to monitor the level of customer satisfaction that is being experienced by their clients.

He also noted that preliminary research findings had shown that executive agencies still faced some challenges in improving their customer service delivery. The extent of this perception varies however, depending on the demographics of the respondents.

Mr. McKoy was speaking at the recently held Friday Policy Forum, hosted by the Management Institute for National Development (MIND), at its Old Hope Road Campus in Kingston.

The Contractor General said that the research was conducted with the use of the SERVQUAL research instrument, which has been used to measure client satisfaction in the public sector and non-profit sectors across the globe.

These, he said, have included local government and voluntary sectors in the United Kingdom, as well as nursing home residents and their relatives in the United States.

SERVQUAL is also relevant to cross-cultural application, he noted, citing countries including Singapore, India, Thailand, Taiwan and Scotland as users of the research instrument – on services ranging from sale of children’s clothing to delivery of MBA programmes.

SERVQUAL, as the name suggests, measures the quality dimensions of the service being offered. Service quality, the Contractor General noted, was the discrepancy between the customers’ expectations and perceptions of service.

“Where the customers’ perception of service is the same or greater than that which was expected, this is defined as good service quality. Where the customer’s perception of service is less than that which was expected, this is defined as poor service,” Mr. McKoy told the MIND Forum.

Turning to the issue of service in the new public sector entity – the executive agency – he said that the public’s perception of the need for improvement in executive agencies tended to vary, based on factors including gender, marital status, age, education levels and income.

According to the preliminary research, dissatisfaction levels were greatest for men, singles, 31 to 40 year-olds and persons with postgraduate education. Those who experienced the lowest levels of dissatisfaction were women, divorcees, persons 61 years and older and those with primary level education.

Interestingly, the level of monthly income did not seem to have corresponding levels of satisfaction, as satisfaction levels declined and rose, independently it seemed, as the monthly income increased.

Mr. Mckoy is the 14th speaker in the MIND Friday Policy Forum series. Last month’s speaker was Director of Health Promotion and Protection in the Ministry of Health, Dr. Deanna Ashley, who spoke on Healthy Lifestyles in Jamaica: Implications for Policy and Action.