Paper Title
A Quality Function Deployment (QFD) Approach toward the Service Improvement of Hospitals
Abstract
Patients nowadays started to request more autonomy on his/her medical care, which may cause conflicts during the interactions between service providers and patients, this situation may result in failure of hospital operations. This study intends to concentrate an effort on evaluating the needs and weights of the customer concerned items as well as determining the skills and weight from the technology provides.The findingsindicate that amongthe five dimension of service failure in hospitals, the failure that hospital staffs perceived the most important ranking was “service attitude and responsiveness failure”, followed by “customer perception failure”, “customer attitude failure”, “professionalism failure” and “hospital environment failure”. While for service recovery strategies, the most effectivestrategies to deal with service failures were “communication”, followed by “apology and appeasement”, “give health education and correct medical knowledge”, “suggestion box”, and “fulfill customers' requests immediately”. This study may contribute to the current literature for academics and professionals, particularly for those in the hospital industry.
Keywords - Service Quality, Service Failure, Service Recovery, Quality Function Deployment, Analytic Hierarchyprocess