A Combined Application of SERVQUAL and fuzzy DEMATEL to Evaluate a University's Service Quality

Abstract

Owing to the rapid development of today's globalized era, studies on service quality improvement has been an increasing concern. The service sector, unlike goods, offers intangible products, and it is often difficult to evaluate. Several fundamental techniques were developed to address the issue such as service quality (SERVQUAL) and multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM). However, due to different system natures, the application is often limited to the specific sector such as education sector. Accordingly, this study aims to develop a decision-making model to determine key criteria and to visualize causal relationships among criteria in the education sector. A case study of student admission service in an Indonesian private university is selected. The service has an important role to attract prospective students choosing the university. The integration of SERVQUAL and fuzzy DEMATEL (decision making trial and evaluation laboratory) was selected since the SERVQUAL method is able to identify relevant service quality criteria, while fuzzy DEMATEL can visualize cause-and-effect relationships among criteria. In this study, nine criteria were identified. Then, the fuzzy DEMATEL method determined two key criteria, namely reliability and communication. Besides, two identity criteria were classified, which were: cause criteria group and effect criteria group. A digraph was developed to model the relationships for both cause and effect criteria group. This study may provide a significant implication for the decision-makers (DMs) in education sector when determining an improvement priority in a service system.