ASSESSING SERVICE QUALITY AND CUSTOMER SATISFACTION USING SERVQUAL MODEL (A mixed-method study to assess service quality of ultrasound departments of private hospitals in Karachi city)

Abstract: Service quality and customer satisfaction are important concepts that companies need to understand to stay competitive in business and thus grow. Companies need to know how to measure these constructs from the consumer's perspective to understand their needs better and thus satisfy them. Service quality is considered very important as it leads to higher customer satisfaction, profitability, lower costs, customer loyalty, and customer retention. Through reviewing the present later, the author determined the significance of service quality within the health care sector and learned the importance of ultrasonography experience for mothers. Hence, the study's main purpose was to examine how expectant mothers perceive the service quality of private healthcare hospitals in Karachi city by investigating their service perceptions and expectations. The mixed-method research design was applied, followed by the first phase of the quantitative approach to collect a general understanding of the sample population over the research idea through survey questionnaires. Qualitative data was collected to explore the reasons underlying the quantitative results and enrich the interpretation of quantitative data. The gap score calculated is -0.89, suggesting that the mother's expectation of the perceived service is higher than the experienced service. Furthermore, many challenges were identified associated with the service delivery experience and faced by mothers as service receivers and healthcare officials as service providers. The application of this model in evaluating service quality and customer satisfaction from the consumer's point of view results, among other things, in knowing the customer's perception of service quality customers' perceptions of service quality, attempting to meet and manage customer expectations, improving quality management by identifying areas of weakness in meeting customer needs.