Vartotojų pasitenkinimo viešojo sektoriaus paslaugomis ypatumai

Abstract

This paper aims to reveal the features of consumers’ satisfaction with public services, as consumer satisfaction with services is one of the indicators of quality of services in organizations. It is very important to know the consumers satisfaction level, which may reflect the quality of services, organizational performance, the ability to meet specific customers’ needs, and even it might determine citizens' trust in the public sector. Modern authors indicate that consumer satisfaction with public services can reflect not only the quality of the services, but also some cognitive and personality factors of consumers. In Lithuania this kind of research has not been carried out yet before, and this article presents survey (n = 465), which was conducted in Lithuania in 2013. The aims of this survey was to find out features of customers’ satisfaction with public services as well as identify some psychological characteristics of consumers, and evaluate the attitudes of public sector employees towards the causes of  customer satisfaction  or dissatisfaction. The survey showed that 10 percent of consumers are not satisfied with the quality of public services, 9 percent of consumers are not satisfied with the terms of rendered public services; consumer satisfaction with the services and consumer satisfaction with the terms of rendered services are statistically significantly related (r = 0.611), consumer awareness characteristics are related to respondents satisfaction with public services. Public sector employees noted some vulnerable factors that might affect consumer dissatisfaction: too small number of staff in public organizations, lack of financial resources, the total workload of specialists; public sector employees have also proposed some intervention strategies: less number of tasks assigned to for each employee, human resources training in communication with consumers, more efficient use of information technologies, education of the public service consumers about their rights and responsibilities.