Quality management and assessment in service organizations, an application in passanger transport sector

Increasing share of the service sector in economy leads to an ever-growing importance of service and its quality. However, due to the facts that services are intangible, heterogeneous, and non-stockable items, and that they are produced and consumed simultaneously, the strategic decisions taken by the service organizations and the quality measurement methods used by them differ widely from product manufacturing organizations.On the other hand, since services have a human factor, they necessarily involve different levels of contact with clients; in fact, level of contact with clients is also taken into consideration while taking decisions as regards to the location, order, process design, and planning of service organizations.Considering the rapid increase of competition within the service sector during the recent years, it seems obvious that the service firms need to adopt quality improvement as a principle, and to spread the concept of total quality management all over the organization, in order to maintain their existence and to become distinct among their competitors.However, while it is possible for the product-producing companies to determine the numerical standards as regards to qualities of both the process and the final product, the evaluations to be made on the output of services ?the most important input of which is the human factor, due to their very nature ? inevitably remain subjective, and the perception of quality is affected by social/psychological factors.In this study, the servqual method, which is based on the principle of measuring the service quality through the determination of consumer perceptions and expectations, has been applied on an intercity passenger transport company, and the comments, evaluations, and recommendations have been put forward based on the obtained results.Keywords:1. Service Sector2. Total Quality Management3. Service Quality4. Intercity Passenger Transport Sector5. Servqual