Assessing Users' Perceptions on how to Improve Public Services Quality

Cláudia Carvalho and Carlos Brito

Public Management Review, 2012, vol. 14, issue 4, 451-472

Abstract: In order to address new demands from citizens and companies, public agencies are developing new ways of delivering public services within a multi-channel logic. In this context, Citizen Shops have been designed to increase speed of response, to simplify procedures and, above all, to improve service quality. This article aims to evaluate the perceptions of users of public services in order to improve their quality. The article follows a marketing perspective, paying special attention to citizens' expectations and perceptions and to the role of emotions in the encounter. Given the nature of the research issue, the investigation followed a case-study methodology. The authors present an adaptation of the Critical Incident Technique and analyse extensive qualitative and quantitative data collected in six Portuguese Citizen Shops. The findings show that expectations are extremely dynamic and play a relevant role in users' satisfaction. Satisfying and neutral attributes were identified, and the Critical Incident Technique also revealed the importance of emotions in the encounter.

Date: 2012
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/14719037.2011.649976 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:pubmgr:v:14:y:2012:i:4:p:451-472

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/RPXM20

DOI: 10.1080/14719037.2011.649976

Access Statistics for this article

Public Management Review is currently edited by Professor Stephen P. Osborne, Jenny Harrow and Tobias Jung

More articles in Public Management Review from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().