Service Quality Assessment of Utility Company in Haryana using SERVQUAL Model

This paper presents the analysis of service quality of the electricity utility company, UHBVN, supplying northern areas of Haryana State, India. Analysis of service quality is pivotal for finding the key areas where the company needs to have some improvement in service delivery. The assessment of service quality is carried out using the SERVQUAL model having ten dimensions; each dimension is having five items. Ten dimensions are tangibility, empathy, reliability, responsiveness, communication, security, accessibility, credibility, competence and assurance. For this study, primary data has been collected from the electricity customers of Sonepat district using the well-structured questionnaire, designed on the basis of SERVQUAL model. Respondents’ responses are collected for fifty items of expectations and fifty for perceptions. As described by SERVQUAL model, service quality is judged by measuring the gap between the customers’ expectations and their perceptions of services offered by company. The gap measurement in this study shows that the company's services do not meet the customer expectations. The results infer that communication is the only dimension on which company's performance meets the customer expectations, through to a little extent; whereas, tangibility is the dimension where the utility lags the most. Therefore, the utility company should endeavour to offer good services quality, giving priority to the dimensions having large gap between customers’ expectations and perceptions.