measuring the difference between quality characteristics and delivery of service in the insurance industry (the case of iran insurance company in the isfahan province)

nowadays service industry plays an essential and significant role in economic growth and development of nations, while the role and importance of insurance industry as a supporting base of other industries is apparent. on the other hand, the world of insurance is rapidly changing and getting competitive and correct understanding of customers' requirements and their satisfaction are essentials for organizations to survive and grow. superior service quality has been recognized as a key player in satisfying customers. in the insurance industry, service quality is mostly dependent upon personnel performance. therefore, it can be argued that in this industry, the quality of internal service is a strategic means towards customer satisfaction. in the modified model of service quality gaps, seven major gaps have been addressed of which, three gaps are related to the internal environment of organization. therefore, this investigation has been conducted in the insurance industry considering the important role of internal service quality gaps in structuring internal environment of organizations and based on the measurement of the third internal service quality gap, i.e. the difference between quality characteristics and delivery of service. the collected data is both library and questionnaire based. the statistical population of this research includes all of the personnel of the iran insurance company in the province of isfahan from mid of march to mid of june 2008. due to the small size of statistical population, sampling has not been performed and statistical analysis has been made on the whole population. the third internal gap has been measured using descriptive analysis and it has been computed as 2.2359 at the studied company.