INFORMATION SYSTEMS SERVICE QUALITY

3. INFORMATION SYSTEMS SERVICE QUALITY

Having deined IS and service quality, it is now timely to focus our attention on the concept of information systems service quality (ISSQ). In its simplicity, ISSQ refers to the standard of excellence accorded to all IS services that are being rendered to respective customers in an efort to ensure IS efectiveness, as well as to attain users’ expectation and satisfaction. ISSQ came into being because of the increased expectation of customers on IS services and their urgent need for quality services. IS services, according to Ward and Peppard [19] can be categorized under four headings, namely: strategy and planning services, application development services, application and technical services and technology delivery and maintenance services. In addressing service quality for these services, Ward and Peppard [19] stressed that it is important to evaluate IS services, particularly where those services have great consequence.

The interest in ISSQ has been substantiated with increased demand for timely delivery of quality IS services. In this knowledge-driven era, coupled with the advancement of the Internet, and other relevant technologies which promote better connectivity and productivity, customers across organizations, whether internal or external, are more conversant with what they want out of IS services and their expectations have also increased. Customers are explicitly demanding better quality and fast delivery of IS services. This notion is evidenced by the study conducted by Miller, Brooks, and Jones [12] on users’ expectations using the SERVQUAL instrument developed by Parasuraman, Berry, and Zeithaml [14]. The study indicated that users of IS functions have consistently high expectations across organizations, and these expectations varies across age and gender.

High user expectations relates to high user satisfaction which necessitate the service provider to not only meet what the user expects the IS services to be but also to ensure that the users of those services are actually satisied with the services rendered. Kim, Eom, and Ahn [9] conducted a study to examine the relationship between service quality and user satisfaction. Their indings showed that as service quality increases,

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user satisfaction gets better because actual IS services provided have exceeded user expectation. Users have also found that overall service quality mediates the relationship

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between service quality and user satisfaction. In addition to increased user expectations and satisfaction which signify service quality,

the IS communities are also looking at ways and means to exponentially increase the

success rates of IS implementations, as well as to boost the efectiveness of IS services. The need for IS success and efectiveness warrants serious attention to be accorded to ISSQ. Pitt, Watson, and Kavan [17] and DeLone and McLean [4] believed that the measurement of IS success or efectiveness is critical to the understanding of the value and eicacy of IS management actions and IS investments. In their D&M IS Success Model developed in 1992, DeLone and McLean [4] identiied several dimensions to measure the diferent success levels, namely: “systems quality” which measures technical success; “information quality” which measures semantic success; and “use, user satisfaction, individual impacts” and “organizational impacts” which measure efectiveness success. The model gained much attention and also acceptance as a comprehensive framework to integrate IS research indings. However, as the role of IS changed and progressed with changing technologies, the model was put through a series of critiques which initiated further research works, and this prompted DeLone and McLean [4] to come up with the updated D&M IS Success Model which includes a new dimension “service quality” as shown in Figure 1 below. Service quality was identiied as the most important variable for measuring the overall success of the IS department and that the existing dimensions such as information quality and system quality were only critical measures to evaluate the success for single systems.

INFORMATION QUALITY

INTENTION TO

USE

USE

SYSTEM QUALITY NET BENEFITS

USER SATISFACTION

SERVICE QUALITY

Figure 1: Updated D & M IS Success Model

Further justiication to address service quality in IS was evidenced in a study by Bharati

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and Berg [2] where their results showed a causal efect which suggested that system quality, information quality, user IS characteristics through their efect on employees’ IS performance inluence service quality, while technical support inluences service

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quality directly. In order to measure service quality, researchers have based their works using the

SERVQUAL assessment instrument developed by Parasuraman et al. [16] in 1985. This instrument has attracted many a debate from peer researchers such as Kettinger and Lee, Van Dyke, Kappelman, and Prybutok and Pitt, Watson, and Kavan. Some of these debates actually resulted with new instruments being proposed such as SERVPERF [17] and SERVCESS [11]. In the Malaysian research fraternity, Alias and Abdul Rahman [1] developed the prototype Information Systems Service Quality Assessment (ISSQeA) instrument which took advantage of more recent web-based and wireless technologies. ISSQeA identiies the service quality gaps using online questionnaires to generate the ISSQ Gap Analysis reports and also the SQ Comments & Suggestions reports for the top management to make better decisions on IS service quality matters. The ISSQeA aims at contributing to better IS services for users which in turn will be part of the contributing cause for the organization to achieve its competitive advantage.

More recent studies on IS, service quality and ISSQ [6, 8, 10, 11, 12] bear witness to the continued interest of researchers in the ield of service quality and IS, in an efort to improve existing literatures and frameworks in tandem with fast changing technologies which stimulate the digital age. The need for better IS services demonstrates the signiicance of implementing ISSQ in organizations; however, implementors of ISSQ will have to consider a few challenges in order to ensure its success.