Citizens' Position in Service Quality Perception. An Approach Analysis in the Case of Spanish Local Administrations

Abstract

Public sector organizations are not immune to pressure in order to improve their services to citizens. At this point, a major problem is that of “citizen-customer” satisfaction surveys being prone to focus on individuals’ perceptions on service delivery: what the individual think about the quality of delivered service. Authors have usually considered tools like the SERVQUAL scale (useful at measuring service quality in a diverse number of organizations and situations, both in private and public sector spheres) as a prior reference when researching in the quality field, but as being the “source”, then changed (modified) into a more or less “new” proposal. Following this research guideline, in this paper a new model for measuring perceived quality level in local government activities is presented. Three dimensions are suggested for citizens to valuate service quality: technical, functional and overall features.