Measuring service quality and an assessment in the context of public relations: Türk Telekomünikasyon A.Ş. Ankara implementation

In recent years competition in the service sector, the recruitment proportion of which is increasing day by day, is intensifying and efforts for obtaining the service quality is becoming important. In order to understand the quality perception in services, which is differenciating from goods by various features such as heterogenity, intangibility etc., different manners are developed. Service quality is analysed under these various methods.The aim of the thesis is to determine the exceptions and perceptions of the customers, to who are served by Türk Telekomünikasyon A.Ş. in Ankara, and assessing the gap between exceptions and perceptions through public relations context. The research was implemented with participation of 687 customers of 9 Telekom Directorates in Ankara. It is aimed to understand both the expected service quality level of the ideal telecommunications company, and the perceived service quality level of Türk Telekomünikasyon A.Ş. The research also aimed to measure the awareness level of customers from public relations acitivities of Türk Telekominkasyon A.Ş. Finally, the relation between public relations awareness level and perceived service quality level is investigated together with the relation between the perceived service quality level and customer intensity of 9 Telekom Directorates.A questionnaire was prepared and implemented during the research. Firstly demographical informations were measured. Expected and perceived service quality levels were measured by assessing the answers of the questionnaire, which is prepared through 5-Likert measure. Results were analysed by using SPSS v.15. in order to measure the awareness of public relations activities, 5-Likert measure was also used ın the last part of the questionnaire.As result of the evalution of the questionnaires, it is seen that trust, answering speed and reliability dimensions are evaluated as the most important quality dimensions. Servqual results are also compared among Telekom Directorates and it is seen that the service quality perceptions of Bahçelievler and Dikmen Directorates are higher than the rest of the Directorates. Customers, having high public relations awareness level have a high service quality perception level. That shows us the relation between public relations and service quality perception. On the contrary, there is no determination about the customer intendity and the perceived service quality level.According to the findings, comments about the most important service quality dimensions and features for competing telecommunication companies, especially for Türk Telekomünikasyon A.Ş. are emphasized and advices are recommended for those companies.KEY WORDS1.Service Quality2.Servqual3.Measuring Service Quality4.Türk Telekomünikasyon A.Ş.5.Public Relations