Service quality of logistics activities: An application with quality function deployment in cargo companies

The efficient management of logistic activities can be used as a means to improve talents of firms' quick response to changing conditions in market and of their struggle with fierce competition. This situation has created an awareness about the necessity that firms make improvement on logistic service quality in order to maximize the customer satisfaction and to gain a sustainable advantage over rival companies. Improvements on logistic service quality are made possible by transfer of customer needs in service processes. For this reason, customer needs and determination of technical solutions offered for these needs have an utmost importance. Thus, in this study, Quality Function Deployment which presents a map for improving service quality in the way of unifying customer needs with technical solutions and transfer of these customer needs in service processes. The firm that Quality Function Deployment will be applied to, was chosen by the TOPSIS method. The criteria weights fort he application of TOPSIS method were calculated by Entropy method. In order to determine customer needs, after a literature review, face to face interview was used. In order to determine importance degrees of customer needs and the level of satisfaction supplied by firms for these needs, a survey was made. With the obtained data, by following application steps of Quality Function Deployment, house of quality was created for the chosen courier company. Finally, in order to improve the service quality of the company suggestions were made by analyzing the house of quality.