1.1 Research Motivation
Based on the service quality researches in 2019 it is shown that one third of clients would think about switching the company if they face poor-quality service, rather than
continuing using the service of previous company. (Nextiva, 2019) However, these results do not show the real picture of educational sphere. Educational institutions have always been
underestimated in terms of service industry. By checking the definition of service industry there are shown examples of banking and sales spheres while education is not considering as service.
(The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2020). Even if a manager wants to improve service quality at his/her educational institution, he/she will face a problem with the literature, as most of them cover only sales/banking spheres. Education sector is highly important and valuable in terms of researching, there are still so many physical interactions among the staff and students.
Nowadays, every sphere in the world is looking for an opportunity to sell their goods or services online, educational institutions also are moving in the same directions. However, this sphere has hundreds years of history and experience, therefore, it is more conservative than others (banking or sales). While education still faces physical communications every day, it has to be evaluated and improved if necessary. Furthermore, being inspired to go deeper in terms of service at educational center this survey is planned to research the core problems at Mandarin Training center (MTC).
MTC is one of the best Chinese language centers in whole Taiwan. It definitely has its service quality, which is evaluated regularly, however, the results show that clients (students of MTC) are dissatisfied with service provided by information center. Moreover, the author herself had an experience of studying at Chinese language center. And during the studying process the author founded herself dissatisfied with some services provided by front desk and decided to find the core of this problem and the solution for it.
This study combines two ideas: first one is to study service problems at educational sphere while there are so few researches on this topic. And the second one – find the source of service failure at MTC and try to solve it.
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1.2 Research Objectives and Questions
The main purpose of this study is to identify service failures at educational institution and find solutions to solve them. These solutions can be used to prove the existence of service failure and therefore improve the service quality. The results of this study can be analyzed by MTC and discussed upon further development of the institution. For reaching the main goal it is necessary to answer following questions:
RQ1: What kind of service failures have been faced during observation?
RQ2: What kind of strategy might be used at MTC after revealing the existence of service failure?
Based on the main aim of this study and related questions objectives can be formulated as follows:
O1: Conduct observation at information center at MTC
O2: According to the observation results describe service failure types O3: Provide a solution to solve each service failure
RQ1 is related to O1 and O2, starting with performing (reaching) O1 and O2. O1 is the core of the entire research, therefore based on the results of observation other questions should be answered in accordance with it, besides, O2 should be analyzed according to the data obtained in O1. RQ2 shows answers to the O3, which is also related to the main goal of this research. It can be used as recommendation for MTC.
1.3 Research Scope and Limitations
The results of this study are made in accordance with theory and observation. The theoretical part is based upon SERVQUAL, service encounters and service gaps. The
observation part is held at MTC by the author herself, and the duration of the observation took one month. This study will focus on defining service failure at MTC at information center and on providing an efficient solution for solving the problems. MTC is chosen for representing
information desks at educational institutions, therefore the results of this study might be analyzed by other schools in case of need.
The population is presented by the students to whom the service was delivered. It might be discussing any problems or simply asking a question to the staff, all the cases were recorded and analyzed by the author. However, this study is limited due to collection method process and
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the time of observation, recording was held only for several hours per day which means that not all cases were analyzed in a given period of time, therefore, it led to the shortage of respondents’
number. As the observation was taken by one person, it did not exclude the personal factor. As a result, it leads to cultural difference, because all of the problems were analyzed on the basis of author’s perception. Therefore, the result might be different if the observation would be conducted by another person. And the last problem is limitations of literature, as most of the studies investigate service recoveries and service failures in the different spheres (not at the educational ones).
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