Assessing Service Quality and Customer Satisfaction of Electric Utility Provider’s Online Payment System during the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Structural Modeling Approach

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has rapidly changed people’s lives, especially technological advancements. Most service industries have opted to adopt online payments since the pandemic happened. Electric utility companies are one of the major industries that utilize online payments as an alternative mode of payment to traditional cash payments to minimize person-to-person contact. The current study aimed to assess electric utility companies’ service quality and customer satisfaction to improve the payment system. The study was conducted in Occidental Mindoro Electric Cooperative, Inc. (OMECO), which utilized an online payment system due to COVID-19-protocol. The research model comprises 60 questionnaires with ten sections developed from the literature and distributed to 400 participants. The data were analyzed using the structural equation modeling and path analysis technique. The results showed that Online Payment Security had the most positive effect on service quality, thus affecting customer satisfaction. Moreover, tangibility, reliability, online payment method, and COVID-19-protocol positively affected service quality. While reliability, assurance, and empathy had a negative effect on the service quality of OMECO. Aligning with the result, OMECO was poorly evaluated by the participants in terms of empathy, assurance, responsiveness, and reliability. Moreover, the result of the study can be used by major electric companies to improve their service in terms of online payment. Finally, the current research is one of the first studies that integrate service quality and customer satisfaction while utilizing the structural modeling approach.