The Study of the Relationship between Total Quality Management and Service Quality Improvement Leading to an Optimal Model Presentation

The purpose of this paper is to determining the present condition of service quality and the study of the implementation of total quality management and its emphasis on the five main principles namely customer satisfaction, continual improvement, Involvement of people, process approach and finally systematic approach in insurance companies in order to determine how TQM principles affect service quality improvement in Iran Insurance Industry and eventually the presentation of an optimal model. The research method was applied and Survey–Correlation and the statistic population is three companies based in Iran: Dana, Alborz ,Iran Insurance Companies including the managers, employee and customers. Using Morgan table, the sample volume for managers is 203, employee 312 and customers 385 people which have been selected by simple random and clustering sampling. The data collected tools are six questionnaires related with the five gaps of service quality and TQM Principles, which its validity with Content method and their Reliability by Cornbach method have been confirmed. In order to analyze the data, Spearman correlation method, Wilcoxon tests method, Mann-Whitney assessment method and ANOVA method have been used. Research Findings show that rate of present service quality as %52/2 from the customers' point of view and also they estimated the rate of five gaps in service quality as %-2/5, %2/7, %-2/5, %-0/2 and %-1/6 for the first through fifth gaps respectively; these represent inappropriate service quality in industry. Also the results represent that there are reverse proportion between the fifth principles of total quality management and the components of service quality gaps. The importance of the current study is not only to determine the service quality condition insurance industry based on gap model but also to analyze TQM principle relation with the components of quality's fifth gaps and it shows that to carryout this principle in insurance by not using quality gaps would be effective on service quality. The great problem, however, in running total quality management is that this kind of point of view in every organization would face with its difficulties according to its goals and conditions. There for it would be run as a framework in every organization. The present study presented an optimal model to improve service quality emphasis on total quality management in insurance industry.