Abstract:
Client satisfaction, as an imperative total quality management philosophy, lately has been
incorporated in the 2000 edition of the ISO 9000 quality management system but has attracted
much attention in the recent years worldwide. Client satisfaction is emerging as a new
business strategy in engineering design firms due to strict procurement policies of the client.
The research focused to develop a comprehensive framework for the assessment of client
satisfaction of the engineering design firms based upon attribution and expectation
disconfirmation models of consumer satisfaction/dissatisfaction. SMEC Oil & Gas (Pvt.) Ltd
was selected as a case study for the assessment of client satisfaction regarding its engineering
design services. A census was carried out to avoid biasness and have accurate results using an
online questionnaire survey to approach highly scattered population under study. The primary
data obtained from 108 respondents during the survey which was employed to establish a
client satisfaction function using multiple linear regressions for deriving strategies for
consultants to achieve client satisfaction. The results showed that both the factors significantly
contributed to explain client satisfaction but comparatively expectations disconfirmation had
the larger impact on client satisfaction than the attributes of engineering design service
success/failures. The results had proven that client satisfaction is explained more precisely
when both attribution and expectation disconfirmation concepts are applied collectively rather
than individually. Based upon these results an automated web based application has also been
developed for client satisfaction evaluation of the firm under different scenarios.
The approach of this research is useful to engineering consulting firms, not only in Pakistan,
but also worldwide for identifying and improving on their own weak areas to enhance the
quality of engineering design services for their clients.
