Integrating Kano’s Model and SERVQUAL to Improve Healthcare Service Quality

Peer Review Only The purpose of this research is focus on customer relationship management (CRM) strategies and relationship between service attributes and customer satisfaction through Kano’s model especially on healthcare service at the private hospital. The paper specifically investigates the applicability of the model and the key factors in the hospital service business. The hospital service quality much depends on the performance of the attributes that define a service. The aim of this paper is first to investigate the attribute of service quality using Servqual perspective, thus the management is able to adjust the relationship between performance of service attributes and customer satisfaction, and second, through a case study in the private hospital to prove that the importance of a service attribute is a function of the performanceof that attribute. An empirical study using questionnaires with a focus on service enquiring about the performance of service key attributes and overall customer satisfaction was conducted using Servqual perspective including 5 parameters i.e. Tangibles, Reliability, Responsiveness, Assurance, Empathy. The data were fed into the Kano customer satisfaction model which used Five-level Kano questionnaire for analysis and comparison between one attribute to the others. This research found that there are three of the total 26 service quality attributes have been categorized as “attractive”. Four service quality attributes have been categorized as “must be”, and sixteen of them as “one-dimensional”. However, there is no service quality attribute can be categorized as “reverse” and “questionable”. It can be predicted that offering customers “must be” or expected quality attributes will not be enough for customer satisfaction in few next days cause of the contemporary world and the environment changing. Hence, companies should focus on “attractive” quality attributes instead of “must be” or “one-dimensional” attributes in order to satisfy customers and to achieve competitive advantage. The research limitations is the Kano model of customer satisfaction needs to be extended to other customer behavior variables and also management strategic response to increase customer loyalty; which not include in this paper. The implication is the methodology employed here can be easily applied by hospital management to evaluate customer behaviors and service quality performance