The global competition in technical skills has put a lot severe pressure on the services sector especially on the training institute. All the Vocational Training Institutes are trying to improve their services quality level in order to retain trainees as well as their employers. It is also very difficult for trainees to perceive the difference in services offered by most of the Vocational Training Institutes as competitors quickly bring new Trainings in the World.
I have chosen Vocational Training Institutes as our organization of interest for having application of SERVQUAL Model and conducting research. Network in of Vocational Training Institutes is spread in all over the Punjab its head office is located at green Town in Lahore and its portfolio of 146 offices spreads in Punjab.
Introduction to Vocational Training Institutes
Vocational Training Institutes has been established under Punjab Vocational Training Council (PVTC) Govt. of the Punjab to give demand driven skills for poverty alleviation within the country. The Vocational Training Institutes are presently offering different courses including Computer Operator, Repair and Maintenance of Electrical Appliances, Beautician, Mobile Phone Repair, Auto CAD, Import Export Procedure and Documentation, DBMS, and Dress Making for training.
MISSION STATEMENT
"The mission of the PVTC is to alleviate poverty with zakat fund by imparting demand driven skill training to Mustahqeen-e-zakat at their door step, involving private sector to enhance employability".
Total No of VTI's 146
Total Trades Operated 34
Annual Pass outs 26000
Total Pass outs (since inception) 100359
Employability of Traceable Pass outs 63%
Trainees Gender Ratio (F:M) 2:3
Total Employees of VTI's 2376
Total Instructional Staff 1269
Total Admin Staff 1107
Trainees /Instructional Staff ratio 7:1
SERVQUAL Model
Trainees and Employers satisfaction is usually achieved through service quality in order to have strong influence on the most the current and pass outs trainees Tangibles, reliability, responsiveness, competence, courtesy, credibility, access, communication, and understanding the Trainees are the variables or dimensions that have been identified as determinants of service quality common to the services sector.
Tangibles: Tangible includes the physical appearance of the facilities that is attached with the services. Whether it attracts the Trainees or not.
Reliability: Shows the dependency on the service and believe in getting the desire result as always when service is taken.
Responsiveness: how quickly respond to the trainee's problem, willingness and desire to provide the Training.
Assurance: confirmation of the system quality and dependability. The agreement between the actual and the expected service or its performance
Empathy: effort and ease which is consumed to get the service, it also includes that training is easily accessible and available when it is needed.
It was developed on following grounds and research findings;
The measure of the difference between service perceptions and expectations is services quality
Service quality in fact highlights gap between the Trainee's received service (what a VTI's actually offers) and his expected service (his feeling about what a VTI's should offer).
Meeting or exceeding consumer's expectations means good training quality is offered.
The 22-instument items or statements in the SERVQUAL are used to measure the performance across five dimensions mentioned above, whereas these dimensions use point likert scale for measuring both customer expectations and perceptions. However, it must be noted that sometimes feedback from customer surveys can be highly misleading and unreliable from both a policy and an operational perspective, if the there is insufficient information on both the expected quality of services and perceptions of services received.
Usefulness of SERVQUAL Model
The widespread applications published have highlight following benefits of using SERVQUAL model as a quality measurement tool in the service industry:
Broader areas of a firm's services quality strengths and deficiencies can be highlighted using SERVQUAL as an effective diagnostic tool.
This tool not only measures the relative importance of Reliability, Responsiveness, Assurance, Tangibles, and Empathy but also helps the management in tracking the service quality performance over time.
Trainee's relative importance, expectations, and satisfaction can be easily brought to the surface using this tool.
The perception of both management and customers is brought into the notice of management.
The areas of training weaknesses and shortfalls can be prioritized.
Effective strategies and tactics can be formulated to ensure the fulfillment of Trainee's expectations, with SERVQUL to address training gaps.
Benchmarking becomes easier for a service firm in the same industry.
With the periodical application of SERVQUAL, organizations can easily trace the trends of customer relative importance, expectation and perception.
SERVQUAL Model helps the organizations in achieving the satisfaction of the respondents via evaluating the quality of services which is delivered to respondents. SERVQUAL Model helps in increasing the quality standards of the services as it measures the satisfaction of respondents and points out any the flaws. When customers are satisfied with the services quality, it helps in retaining the current customers/trainees and at the same time also helps in attracting new customers/trainees.
Criticism on the SERVQUAL Model
A number of questions have been raised about SERQUAL's conceptual and operational bases, despite the widespread commercial application of it in different sectors and various countries around the world. Specifically the operationalization of the perceived quality concept is mostly criticized on the ground that estimation of trainee's perception may already include perception minus the expectation mental process. In other words, when trainees are asked to rate their perception of quality of training being offered by an organization, they might have already made mental comparison between their perceptions and expectations. SERVQUAL's five dimensions of quality measurement fall under the second criticism. On the basis of its application in various industries, it is found that the five dimensions may not be able to cover aspects of customer service in all service sectors, keeping in view the future broadness of customer service levels. For instance, it has been observed that service emphases are entirely different when we are evaluating "product" services (e.g Vocational Training Institutes), than when we are evaluating "pure" services (e.g. insurance companies)
Scope of the Assignment
The scope of this assignment is limited only to the Vocational Training Institutes with regard to the quality of their training and facilities in all branches of Vocational Training Institutes in all over the Punjab. The main reason for choosing Vocational Training Institutes for evaluating its training quality and facilities is my interest in the technical training skill. This assignment is not about any specific one branch of the Vocational Training Institutes; in fact it has been conducted to measure the performance of the training quality and facilities available in Vocational Training Institutes as a whole.
Sample Population
The target population for this assignment paper is the trainees of Vocational Training Institutes in-depth interview which was lasted to the 30 minutes each. 12 trainees from every Vocational Training Institutes are chosen as a sample, I would like to add, that I have selected the trainees for interview from different trades having minimum graduates and linked from minimum 5 months.
Interview Questions:
Below are the questions are written which are asked by the trainees.
Interview questions with the VTI's Trainees
What is your opinion about the infrastructure which is used by VTI's is Modern and Up-to-date?
Are you satisfied with the physical facilities which are provided by the VTI's to its trainees?
Is level of service same at all times of day and for all trainees?
When there is a problem, does VTI's respond to it quickly?
Is staff of the VTI's willing to cooperate and answer trainees questions?
Is specific time given to trainees for training accomplishments?
What is your opinion about the dressing of the staff in VTI's?
Does training services are delivered on time by VTI's?
Vocational Training Institutes in-depth interview which was lasted to the 30 minutes each. 12 trainees from every Vocational Training Institutes are chosen as a sample, I would like to add, that I have selected the trainees for interview from different trades having minimum graduates and linked from minimum 5 months.
Interview Questions:
Below are the questions are written which are asked by the trainees.
Interview questions with the VTI's Trainees
What is your opinion about the infrastructure which is used by VTI's is Modern and Up-to-date?
Are you satisfied with the physical facilities which are provided by the VTI's to its trainees?
Is level of service same at all times of day and for all trainees?
When there is a problem, does VTI's respond to it quickly?
Is staff of the VTI's willing to cooperate and answer trainees questions?
Is specific time given to trainees for training accomplishments?
What is your opinion about the dressing of the staff in VTI's?
Does training services are delivered on time by VTI's?
Descriptive Statistics
N
Minimum
Maximum
Mean
Std. Deviation
Q1_Tengible
50
1
5
3.40
1.050
Q2_Tengible
50
1
5
3.64
1.174
Q3_Tengible
50
2
5
4.34
.872
Q4_Tengible
50
1
5
3.70
1.282
Q5_Reliability
50
1
5
3.56
1.280
Q6_Reliability
50
1
5
3.96
1.228
Q7_Reliability
50
1
5
3.76
1.061
Q8_Reliability
50
1
5
3.80
1.050
Q9_Reliability
50
1
5
3.84
1.434
Q10_Responsiveness
50
1
5
4.30
.953
Q11_Responsiveness
50
1
5
4.28
1.011
Q12_Responsiveness
50
1
5
4.20
1.050
Q13_Responsiveness
50
1
5
3.66
1.239
Q14_Assurance
50
1
5
4.04
1.228
Q15_Assurance
50
1
5
4.26
.986
Q16_Assurance
50
1
5
3.90
1.298
Q17_Assurance
50
1
5
4.30
.953
Q18_Empathy
50
1
5
3.84
1.201
Q19_Empathy
50
1
5
3.04
1.399
Q20_Empathy
50
1
5
3.54
1.110
Q21_Empathy
50
1
5
3.96
1.142
Q22_Empathy
50
1
5
3.76
1.318
Valid N (listwise)
50
Findings
I have reached to the result that trainees are satisfied with the speed, reliability, and quality of the training of the banks when the services and facilities are evaluating on the SERVQUAL Model five dimensions includes Tangibles, Reliability, Responsiveness, Assurance and Empathy. The assignment has confirmed the excellence of the services which VTI's provides to its trainees as the trainees have shown satisfaction with the training of the VTI's. This is the main reason that VTI's placement percentage is 63%.
Recommendation
I recommend to VTI that it should provide the opportunities to their trainees that they can easily communicate their ideas and feelings with the Vocational Training Institute about the training and facilities of the VTI. Only providing the opportunities to the trainees is not sufficient but also helps them in embedding their ideas in the vocational training quality and then it should be applied. The evidence has proved that the VTI's have achieved the competitive advantage via providing the opportunity to their trainees and employees to give their key ideas and feedback.
Questionnaire
QUALITY OF SERVICE Questionnaire
The following set of statements relate to your feelings about the Vocational Training Institute you have attended. For each statement, please show the extent to which you believe the Vocational Training Institutes has the feature described by the statement. Circle 1, Means that you strongly disagree that the Training Institutes you have attended has this feature, and circling 5 means that you are strongly agree. You may circle any of the numbers in the middle that show how strong your feelings are. There are no right or wrong answers - all we are interested in is a number that best shows your perceptions about the Vocational Training Institute which has trained you.
Strongly Strongly
Disagree Agree
1. The Vocational Training Institute has modern-
looking equipment. 1 2 3 4 5
2. The physical facilities in the Vocational
Training Institute are visually appealing. 1 2 3 4 5
3. Personnel in the Vocational Training Institute
are neat in appearance. 1 2 3 4 5
4. Materials associated with the Training
(such as tools or equipments) are visually appealing. 1 2 3 4 5
5. When the Vocational Training Institute Promises to
do something by certain time it does so. 1 2 3 4 5
6. When you have a problem, the Vocational Training
Institute shows a sincere interest in solving it. 1 2 3 4 5
7. The Vocational Training Institute gets
things right the first time. 1 2 3 4 5
8. The Vocational Training Institute provides its
services at the time it promises to do so. 1 2 3 4 5
9. The Vocational Training Institute
insists on error-free records. 1 2 3 4 5
Strongly Strongly
Disagree Agree
10. The personnel in the Vocational Training Institute
tell you exactly when training will be performed 1 2 3 4 5
11. Personnel in the Vocational Training
Institute give you detailed training. 1 2 3 4 5
12. Personnel in the Vocational Training
Institute are always willing to help you. 1 2 3 4 5
13. Personnel in the Vocational Training Institute are
never be too busy to respond to your requests. 1 2 3 4 5
14. The behavior of personnel in the Vocational
Training Institute instill confidence in you 1 2 3 4 5
15. You feel safe in your dealings with the
Vocational Training Institute. 1 2 3 4 5
16. Personnel in the Vocational Training Institute are
consistently courteous with you. 1 2 3 4 5
17. Personnel in the Vocational Training Institute have
the knowledge to answer Your questions. 1 2 3 4 5
18. The Vocational Training Institute gives
you individual attention. 1 2 3 4 5
19. The Vocational Training Institute has training
hours convenient to all its trainees. 1 2 3 4 5
20. The Vocational Training Institute has
personnel who give you personal attention. 1 2 3 4 5
21. The Vocational Training Institute has your best
interests at heart. 1 2 3 4 5
22. The personnel of the Vocational Training
Institute understand your specific needs 1 2 3 4 5
Thank you for the time you have spent in completing this questionnaire. The results will help us to provide you with the best possible Training in the future.
Trainee Name------------------------------------------------------- VTI ------------------------------------------------------Trade------------------------------------------------------------------- Qualification------------------------------------------Student duration --------------------------------------------------Trade duration----------------------------------------
