Acceptance of technology, quality, and customer satisfaction with information technology department in a community college : a case study

textThis study attempted to determine the level of customer satisfaction of the fulltime faculty and staff with the Information Technology department of Houston Community College (HCC), using Ziethaml et al., (1990) ten dimensions of quality service and the five dimensions of quality service identified by Bestfield et al., (1995). The study was guided by four research questions and used a mixed method approach: quantitative and qualitative research techniques. An online survey made-up of 27 Likert questions and three open-ended questions was sent to 1654 Houston Community College (HCC) employees (851 staff and 803 faculty). Three hundred and one (18.2%) respondents participated in the survey. For the qualitative piece, the top five and bottom rated questions by faculty and staff were used to conduct two focus group sessions: Focus Group One [Faculty] and Focus Group Two [Staff]. The researcher looked for similarities/dissimilarities between the faculty and staff. The results for faculty and staff on both the survey and focus group sessions shared some similarities and dissimilarities on their rating of the dimensions of quality service. For instance, 73.70% of the faculty and 74.90% of the staff were “truly satisfied” with dimension of Courtesy while about twice the percentage of faculty - 13.15% were “truly dissatisfied” with the dimension of Access compared to 7.50% for the staff. Findings of the study led to some conclusions and recommendations. Although the level of customer satisfaction among HCC’s faculty and staff were above average, a deeper consideration of the dimensions reveals that the dimensions of quality service of Leadership, Credibility and Communication are the most dimensions that are in deed of improvements. The recommendations made were: (1) HCC IT department should use this study as a baseline of customer satisfaction with the department and the department’s services for which the IT department may measure its customer satisfaction progress. (2) The HCC IT department should cultivate a strong professional development tract for its staff. This professional development should focus on the aspects of IT services that are unique to the HCC environment. (3) To add congruency and improve customer satisfaction, the various IT groups throughout HCC should be brought under the purview of the Vice Chancellor (VC) of Information Technology. (4) The IT department should improve communication within and without the department; the department should be committed to use board based communication means to improve the exchange and flow of information. (5) The IT department should create a group or team within the department that has the sole job of providing technology training and documentation to the user community – faculty and staff.Educational Administratio