Quality perceptions of internal and external customers: a case study in educational administration

Social and political influences are increasing the importance of quality in the higher education (HE) sector as in other areas of public service. Quality is an elusive concept in most services, but it is particularly so in public service with the wide range of customers and stakeholders involved. Describes an exercise to measure perceived quality with two distinct customer groups, academic and technical staff and students, within the context of a university faculty office using a questionnaire developed from the SERVQUAL instrument. In common with other researchers, it is found that SERVQUAL does not give a good fit to the situation, and that expectation contributes nothing to the predictive value of the data. Significant differences in the factors determining perceived quality are found to exist between internal and external customers. It is suggested that the differences arise from the degree of dependence and frequency/length of contact between the service and the customer, and that this might be a more general phenomenon related not only to the internal/external divide, but to other customer characteristics in both public and private sectors.