The Maturation Of Assessment In Academic Libraries

The Role Of Libqual+

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Libraries are facing significant challenges that have profound implications for their modus operandi. Chief among the challenges are the proliferation of new technologies for delivering library services, the plethora of projects vying for scarce resources, and increasingly demanding constituencies with diverse needs and expectations. Effectively tackling these challenges requires a customerfocused organization that is committed to understanding its constituents and serving them well. What constitutes superior library service quality? How can libraries systematically measure, understand and improve the quality of the services they offer? What are potential organizational barriers to delivering superior customer service and how can libraries overcome them? The collection of papers in this special issue offers a rich reservoir of research- and experience-based insights pertaining to these and other critical questions. Much of the rigorous scholarly research on service quality has emerged only during the last couple of decades. Nevertheless, since the mid-1980s, service quality and its measurement have occupied an increasingly prominent position in the published literature. This topic has been one of the most researched in the services field, particularly during the early years of the evolution of services marketing as a significant subdiscipline of marketing. Two of my colleagues – Professor Len Berry of Texas A&M University and Professor Valarie Zeithaml of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill – and I have made frequent contributions to the literature on service quality based on a stream of research initiated during the formative years of the services discipline and still ongoing. Moreover – and more importantly – I have been a keen observer of the adaptation of some of those contributions in the context of academic libraries. As such I feel especially privileged and pleased to have the opportunity to write a foreword for this special issue. I would like to use this opportunity to:

. provide a brief overview of the evolution and structure of SERVQUAL, a general approach for assessing service quality on which LibQUAL+TM – the focus of this special issue – is based; and

. offer a set of managerial imperatives for going beyond merely measuring to actually improving service quality. A common and consistent theme emerging from early writings and subsequent research on service quality is that customer assessments of this construct stem from a mental comparison of their service expectations, i.e. what they believe a service provider should offer, with their perceptions of the delivered service. The notion that service quality is a function of the expectations-perceptions gap was reinforced by extensive qualitative research that my colleagues and I conducted in multiple sectors. This research also suggested that customers assess quality of service on multiple dimensions and that the dimensional assessments collectively shape the overall quality image of a service organization.

Building on the key insights from our qualitative research, my colleagues and I launched a series of empirical studies to develop, test and refine a scale for measuring service quality as perceived by customers. This series of studies gave birth to SERVQUAL, a five-dimensional, two-part instrument. The first and second parts of SERVQUAL measure customers’ expectations and perceptions, respectively, along a variety of service attributes grouped into the following five dimensions:

(1) Reliability. Ability to perform the promised service dependably and accurately.

(2) Responsiveness. Willingness to help customers and provide prompt service.

(3) Assurance. Knowledge and courtesy of employees and their ability to inspire trust and confidence.

(4) Empathy. Caring, individualized attention the firm provides its customers.

(5) Tangibles. Appearance of physical facilities, equipment, personnel, and communication materials. The appearance of SERVQUAL in the literature spawned numerous commercial and academic studies focusing on service quality assessment; it also triggered a lively debate among academics about the instrument’s psychometric soundness and usefulness. Motivated by this debate and to further refine the scale, we undertook a number of additional studies – both qualitative and quantitative – that covered a period of six years. Insights from these studies led to several refinements. The most significant refinement was the incorporation of two levels of expectations into the first part of the SERVQUAL instrument:

(1) Desired service level: the level of service representing what customers believe can and should be provided, i.e. a ‘‘realistically ideal’’ level of service.

(2) Adequate service level: the minimum level of service customers are willing to accept. The range between these two levels is a zone of tolerance, representing service performance levels a customer would consider satisfactory. The current version of SERVQUAL asks customers to provide three different ratings, on a nine-point scale, for each service attribute: their desired service level, their adequate service level, and their perception of the service organization’s performance. Correspondingly, on the actual survey, there are three columns of rating scales adjacent to the various service attributes, which themselves are presented as a separate column on the left-hand side. The structure of LibQUAL+TM mirrors that of the refined version of SERVQUAL. LibQUAL+TM is also firmly anchored in the extensive qualitative and quantitative research-based foundation on which SERVQUAL stands. Additionally, scholars working in the context of academic libraries have conducted many studies, including several doctoral dissertations, to test and adapt the SERVQUAL framework. As such, of all the various across-discipline adaptations of SERVQUAL, I believe that LibQUAL+TM is by far the most systematic and rigorous, involving scores of researchers and libraries. Service quality measurements obtained through SERVQUAL, LibQUAL+TM, or other variations, are just a first step in improving service quality. The measures merely provide a set of diagnostics pertaining to the perception-expectation gaps experienced by customers. Taking appropriate organizational actions to overcome the service shortfalls experienced by customers, and revealed by the external measurements, is a major challenge for many organizations. A conceptual framework that my colleagues and I have developed, based on in-depth studies within organizations in several different sectors, called the Gaps Model of Service Quality, can serve as a starting point for tackling this challenge. The main thesis of the gaps model is that one or more of a sequence of four internal organizational gaps triggers the service quality gaps experienced externally by customers:

(1) Market information gap: the gap between customers’ expectations and an organization’s understanding of those expectations, i.e. not knowing what customers expect.

(2) Service standards gap: the gap between an organization’s understanding of customer expectations and translation of that understanding into guidelines or specifications for service provision, i.e. not having the right service designs and standards.

(3) Service performance gap: the gap between service specifications and actual service performance, i.e. not delivering to service standards.

(4) Internal communication gap: the gap between actual service performance and what the organization promises customers through its promotional communications, i.e. not matching performance to promises. An important implication of the gaps model is that to deliver superior service, i.e. close the external gaps revealed by customer surveys, organizations must systematically investigate potential internal gaps and take appropriate corrective action. Insights from LibQUAL+TM surveys will provide initial clues about – and directions for investigating – internal shortfalls. The papers in this special issue go beyond LibQUAL+TM in that they focus on how libraries using this assessment tool have acted on the survey findings. By focusing on managerial action rather than mere measurement, the papers collectively offer creative approaches and ideas for conducting in-depth internal examinations, guided by externallygenerated LibQUAL+TM results, to identify and remedy underlying organizational deficiencies that stand in the way of delivering superior service as perceived by customers and lead to internal inefficiencies and misallocation of resources. The four organizational gaps depicted in the gaps model, in addition to resulting in poor customer service, are also a source of internal inefficiencies that drain organizational resources. For instance, the market information gap can lead to over investment of scarce resources in areas that are not critical to customers and under investment in areas that are critical. A case in point is libraries investing heavily in acquiring the latest technologies, before having a good understanding of the extent to which their patrons and employees, who are ‘‘internal customers’’, consider those technologies to be critical and are ready to embrace them wholeheartedly. Thus, using a research-based approach, a` la LibQUAL+TM as a starting point for service improvements, and following that with systematic internal analysis to act on the research findings, constitutes a doublebenefit strategy that can simultaneously improve library service quality and efficiency. The papers in this issue offer a variety of insights for implementing such double-benefit strategies. I invite you to read the papers and benefit from the insights they offer.

A. Parasuraman

Previously published in: Performance Measurement and Metrics, Volume 13, Number 2, 2002 less

Emerald Group Publishing Limited; September 2002
80 pages; ISBN 9781845447151
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