Quality Assessment in an Occupational Health Setting Using SERVQUAL Instrument

Introduction: Good service quality is the company's ability to meet or exceed customer expectations or the degree of discrepancy between customer expectations and perceptions about the quality of offered service. This study was aimed to examine the quality gap of occupational health services in an oil & gas company of Iran. Method: This cross-sectional study was done between March 2013 and April 2014 in Isfahan, Iran. The required data was gathered using a modified SERVQUAL instrument. A total of 194 respondents contributed in the study. Data analysis was done through SPSS. Discussion: The results revealed a negative quality gap in SERVQUAL and its all five dimensions the highest and the least gap was observed in empathy and reliability dimensions, respectively. Also, the highest average gap between workers’ perceptions and expectations was seen in the empathy dimension (-5.60), followed by tangibles (-5.58), assurance (-5.44), responsiveness (-5.33) and reliability (-4.65). Also, statistical differences between expectation and perception of employees were confirmed for SERVQUAL and its dimensions (P<0.001). Result: The results revealed the areas in which the studied company falls far from meeting employees’ expectations. Therefore, they establish the areas in which prompt quality improvements are needed. Therefore, our findings can be used as a basis for quality planning and designing of organizational initiatives to strengthen the quality of occupational health setting. Quality improvement initiatives should be taken across all five dimensions of SERVQUAL.