Measuring customer experience quality in the public sector: the role of service design perceptions in the UAE

Customer experience has recently become a key focus in marketing and service research and practice, increasing rapidly among researchers and practitioners. This increased focus is due to its impact on customers and business performance in general for private and public sector organizations. The role of the customer has evolved dramatically for the long-term success of an organization’s product or service, leading toward customer-centric approaches that will enhance the customer experience. Governments worldwide are increasingly focusing on creating a better customer experience by touching all aspects of the service ecosystem.

Therefore, managing and monitoring the quality of the customer experience is part of an organization's success. Researchers have called for a better understanding of how to measure customer experience quality, as there is no single well-accepted measurement scale from the researchers to measure the customer experience, such as other concepts, due to the complexity and multidisciplinary of the concept. Moreover, most efforts to build a measurement scale for customer experience were in the private sector, whereas efforts in the public sector are scarce. This study attempts to bridge the gap in the existing literature by examining the customer experience quality scale in the public sector. Furthermore, it tries to link customer experience quality with the service design, examine the effect of the customer perceptions of service design on the customer experience, and tries to analyse the effects of the customer experience on the outcomes of it, which are customer emotions, word of mouth, customer satisfaction and customer well-being.

The study adopted the positivist philosophy using a quantitative methodology with a survey questionnaire and used existing measurement scale models adapted to fit the public sector. The survey conducted covered six main dimensions related to customer experience quality. Before launching the survey, a pilot study was conducted, which included academics, practitioners, and customers. The survey had 51 statements distributed online to public sector customers to check their impressions and feelings toward the model dimensions.

Reliability and validity were tested and confirmed, including the measurement and structural models. The proposed relationships in the hypotheses were accepted. The perceptions of service design of the customers in the public sector significantly impacted customer experience quality. Likewise, customer experience quality significantly and positively affected customer experience. In summary, all the proposed hypotheses were accepted. Finally, the study's theoretical and managerial implications and contributions were highlighted, providing a pathway for future research, especially in the public sector.