DISTRICT CLIENT SATISFACTION: AN INPUT TO QUALITY SERVICE
DELIVERY
MARIA D. DELA CRUZ
Submitted to the Faculty of the
College of Business Administration, Capiz State University,
Main Campus, Roxas City
In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements
For the Degree
BACHELOR OF _____________________
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
Background of the Study
Fully aware of the primary importance of clean, safe and
potable water to the health and well–being of the citizenry,
the improvement and expansion of the service coverage of
various types of water delivery systems not only in the
country’s urban centers but more specifically in less
developed localities and rural communities has been one of
the major concerns of the Philippine government.
The development partnership and cooperation between the
national agency Local Water Utilities Administration (LWUA)
and the locally established water districts remain the most
workable and effective concept in the development and
sustaining reliable water supply system in the countryside.
As mandated by law, a water district is an independent,
locally–controlled public corporation whose basic purpose
is toperform public service and supply public wants in the
area of water delivery that will serve and benefit the people
living within its duly defined service area.
The District (D) is one of the hundreds of water
districts that have been set up all over the country pursuant
to P.D. 198, otherwise known as the Provincial Water Utilities
Act of 1973. With the principal business office located in
Your City in the Province of Capiz. It is the local public
utility company that owns and operates the water supply and
distribution system delivering high quality potable water
more than 20,000 residential and commercial water
concessionaires within its service area that includes Roxas
City and the Municipalities of Panay, Ivisan, and Panitan in
the Province of Capiz.
In line with its primary institutional mission, MRWD is
committed to produce and deliver clean, potable and
affordable water to the consuming public within its service
area. Considering that is mandated to provide a most basic
human need, its institutional performance is indeed of utmost
interest and importance not only the company itself, but
also to the government and especially, to the consumingpublic
in its served communities.
The District has tremendously increased its service
connection, from its establishment in 1976, In a span of
four decades, the figures rose from 560 to 24,000 in June
2016 in Roxas City only. Considering this growing number of
concessionaires, subsequent need to focus on clients’
satisfaction is a matter of concern and interest for the
management and the public.
Statement of the Problem
The main objective of this study was to determine the
level of satisfaction of the respondents on the present
service delivery of the District.
Specifically, this study sought to answer the following
questions:
1. What are the services delivered by the District?
2. What is the level of satisfaction on the services
delivery of the District as perceived by the
respondents as a whole and in terms of the different
services?
3. Is there a significant difference in the level of
satisfaction on the services delivery of the District
as perceived by the respondents when grouped
according to socio–demographic profile?
4. Is services delivered by the District acts as
predictor of the level of satisfaction on the
services delivery as perceived by the respondents?
5. What inputs can be drawn based on the result of the
study?
Hypotheses
1. There is no significant difference in the level of
satisfaction on the service delivery of the District
as perceived by the respondents when grouped according
to socio–demographic profile.
2. Services delivered by the District did not act as
predictor of the level of satisfaction on the services
delivery as perceived by the respondents.
Theoretical Framework
This study was patterned on the Servqual Theory,
introduced by Parasuraman, Zeithaml and Berry (1985),
according to them, service quality is the comparison
between customer expectations and perceptions of service.
During the past few decades service quality has become a
major area of academic investigation. Gronroos (1982)
described the total service quality as customer’s
perception of difference between the expected service and
the perceived service. Gefen (2002) defined that service
quality as the subjective comparison that customers make
between the quality of the service that they want to
receive and what they actually get. Delivering superior
service quality appears to be a prerequisite for success.
Service quality is an abstract and elusive construct
because of three features unique to services:
intangibility, heterogeneity and inseparability of
production and consumption (Parasuraman,Zeithaml and Berry
1985). In the absence of objective measures, an appropriate
approach for assessing the quality of a firm’s service
is to measure consumer’s perceptions of quality.
Service quality according to Parasuraman et,al”s (1985),
ten detailed dimensions of service quality through focus
group studies are listed as reliability, responsiveness,
competence, access, courtesy, communication, credibility,
security, competence, understanding the customer and
tangibles.
Service quality has been explored in the past by numerous
researchers with varying perspectives, but majority of
these studies have focused on organizations in a
competitive market (Parasuraman et al, 1985, 1988, 1994;
Zeithaml et al, 1988, 1990 and 2003; Cronin and Taylor,
1992; Teas, 1993) to the detriment of organizations in a
monopoly. There is a need to study service quality within
the context of a monopoly in a water service domain,
considering all processes and operations associated with
the delivery of product and customer services in low income
economies. Also, the important service quality attributes
perceived by customers vary from sector to sector (Kim and
Kang, 1995; Baker and Tremolet, 2003). A better
understanding of customer satisfaction and how this can be
measured is required to provide a prominent role for
customers to lead to an efficient water supply service.
The needs of the consumers are not often considered by
governments and service providers (Sohail and Cavil, 2006;
Thampi, 2006). The customer voice has been slow to develop
in the water sector, unlike other sectors of the economies
such as telecommunications and energy (Clarke and Wallsten,
2003), where consumer organizations have demanded
accountability from marketers and service providers.
Status
