Investigating customer satisfaction and service quality in academic libraries: the case of Technological Educational Institute of Central Macedonia

Abstract

Customer satisfaction and service quality policies have been established in recent years in academic libraries’ management. However, setting regulations and imposing procedures requires reliable methods to evaluate actions. The Technological Educational Institute (TEI) of Central Macedonia is a university institute committed to provide excellent services to its stakeholders, by developing ongoing dialogue. In order to investigate the library users’ habits and assess their satisfaction on provided services, a survey has been conducted. An online questionnaire was developed based on MOPAB’s (Total Quality Management Unit of Greek Academic Libraries) guidelines for data collection and was then distributed to library users. Such questionnaires can be a valuable instrument for monitoring user satisfaction on a systemic manner and improving service quality in libraries. Moreover, the questionnaire could be used, after adjustments, as a benchmarking tool for Greek academic libraries. The analysis revealed that even though users do not fully utilise all services, they manifest a high level of satisfaction.