The influence of service quality dimensions on customer satisfaction within visa facilitation centres in South Africa

Abstract

Over the past few years, there has been a heightened importance on service quality and customer satisfaction within service units of the South African government. This is evidenced by nationwide service delivery protests, suggesting that the quality of service that is expected to be delivered, as envisaged by the public, as customers, is not being delivered to expectation. Visa facilitation service (VFS) centres were established in South Africa in 2014 as a radical departure, which was informed by the South African government's commitment to improve efficiencies and turnaround time. In cognisance of the visa facilitation centres' context, a non-probability convenience sampling procedure was adopted. Data were generated from 297 international students conveniently drawn from a selected university in Gauteng province of South Africa. The multiple regression analysis undertaken showed positive significant predictive relationship between reliability and customer satisfaction (β=0.230, t-value=4.271, p<0.000), responsiveness and customer satisfaction (β=0.156, t-value=2.861, p<0.01) and empathy with customer satisfaction (β= 0.396, t-value =7.074, p<0.000. The study also showed insignificant association between tangibility and customer satisfaction (β=0.038, t-value =0.841, p>0.01) and assurance with customer satisfaction (β= 0.096, t-value =1.683, p >0.01). The study emphasises the need for identifying the dimensions of service quality that are critical in relation to customer satisfaction within the VFS setting.