Assessing the quality of police services using SERVQUAL

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to explore the application of the SERVQUAL approach to assess the quality of service of Strathclyde Police in Scotland. Measuring service quality in public services is fraught with difficulty especially in public services where customers are vulnerable citizens whose contact with the service may be limited. The paper reports on a SERVQUAL survey of elected representatives serving the area covered by Strathclyde Police Force. The survey captures respondents' expectations of an excellent police service and compares these with their perceptions of the service delivered by Strathclyde Police. The paper also reports on a parallel SERVQUAL survey of police officers in Strathclyde to examine how well the force understands its customers' expectations and how well its internal processes support the delivery of top quality policing services. While there is a significant shortfall in meeting customer expectations, the police force appears to have a good understanding of what these expectations actually are. There also appear to be gaps in the formalisation of service quality standards, in the force's ability to meet established standards, and in its ability to deliver the level of service it promises to customers. A key technical result is that the primary SERVQUAL instrument appears to be internally consistent but lacks discriminatory validity between the five SERVQUAL dimensions in this service arena. The paper will be of interest to strategic and operational police service managers and to academics investigating the reliability and value of service quality assessment tools

Customer Satisfaction of Policing the Jamaican Society: Using SERVQUAL to Evaluate Customer Satisfaction

“…Thus it can be extrapolated from such perspective that customer satisfaction is among the many core values of the policing in Jamaica. It is well documented in the literature where customer satisfaction or dissatisfaction has been measured using SERQUAL [32,33,43,44,66,[80][81][82][83][84][85][86][87][88], and the issue has also been evaluated in policing in other jurisdictions outside of Jamaica [22,65,89]; yet no such empirical work has been conducted on the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) [24]. The JCF desires to change its image and so it recognizes that customer satisfaction will be critical to which he has included in the 2015-2018 (Appendix C), Corportate Plan [21]; suggesting that service quality is of importance and is long outstanding it the customer service apparatus.…”

“…including unprofessional conduct, a study has never been conducted on service quality using SERVQUAL on the JCF; yet the police speak of consumer satisfaction among its core values in the 2015-2018 Corporate Plan [20,21]. The issue of measuring service quality, using SERVQUAL, has been done in other police jurisdiction [22,23]. Neither a review of the JCF by Herst [13] nor JCF manual [24] did not speak to an evaluation of the quality of service of the organization.…”

Management Perceptions of Organizational Service Quality Practices

“…Contrary, the customer expectations is determined by responsiveness and assurance. Donnelly et al (2006) conducted a research in Strathclyde Police in Scotland to explore SERVQUAL Model. He reported that a service quality expectation is perceived a good understanding by their customers.…”

Logistics Cooperation: Integrated Logistics Services

“…The clients are becoming less loyal to one business entity and are looking for new business entities which are able to better satisfy their needs. Yan Yeung et al (2006) have argued that, nowadays, the practice of outsourcing the logistics services to third parties is continuously increasing; therefore, it is particularly important for the third parties to deliver these services properly (Lee 2005;Kang 2006;Seth et al 2006;Donnelly et al 2006;Ismail et al 2006;Pantouvakis 2008;Lonial et al 2010;Kersten, Koch 2010;Juga et al 2010;Rodrigues et al 2011;Banomyong 2011).…”

“…Consequently, it is highly important for the service provider to know what the client expects whereas the client must be sure that the service provider is aware of the expectations (Parasuraman 1998;Donnelly 2006;Seth 2006;Busacca 2005;Gilbert 2006). has pointed out that, considering the client's time, expenditures, resources and etc., it is more convenient to receive the whole complex of logistics services from one company than to order them from different companies.…”