Title: Measuring service quality in technical education and healthcare services

Authors: M. PalaniNathaRaja, S.G. Deshmukh, Subhash Wadhwa

Addresses: Department of Mechanical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, New Delhi 110 016, India. ' Department of Mechanical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, New Delhi 110 016, India. ' Department of Mechanical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, New Delhi 110 016, India

Abstract: Organisations have realised that service is having an important contribution to financial performance and customer satisfaction. In recent years, technical education and healthcare have been treated as business organisations and this paper compares the similarities and dissimilarities between these two broad service sectors. The idea of coupling these two sectors is owing to the fact that both the service sectors deal with knowledge and skills associated with the service process. Popular models and their implications towards the technical education and healthcare services are discussed. It is studied and observed that these two service domains are having many commonalties with slight variations. The factors responsible for contributing to the service quality have been identified and reported. It is concluded that there is a need to measure the critical success factors of technical education and healthcare relationships to improve the service operations.

Keywords: service quality; healthcare services; technical education; critical success factors; service operations.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSOM.2006.009858

International Journal of Services and Operations Management, 2006 Vol.2 No.3, pp.222 - 236

Published online: 16 May 2006 *

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