Fatores condicionantes à efetividade do uso de autoatendimento por alunos em uma universidade

Abstract

Nowadays, due the competition in different business fields, it becomes increasingly relevant that organizations adapt themselves to their customer’s demands. The availability of services in self-services channels is, therefore, a way to look for the achievement of expectations and satisfaction of the customers. This research aims at identify the conditioning factors to the effectiveness of the use of self-services in a higher education institution, and to propose actions for the improvement of such services. The investigation was carried out in an institution placed at Rio Grande do Sul. It aims at the identification of the students’ perceptions and their needs regarding the use of self-service, as well as the self-service’s professionals perceptions regarding the needs of the students on self-service. Furthermore, this study contributes to the development of projects that have as objective to look for easiness for users’ attendance, enabling them to get increasing autonomy, and contributing to the agility of the offered services, as well as to the users’ satisfaction. Two methods were adopted to support this research: i) Focus groups with professionals of the institution's service area, and carried out through three groups with eight different participants in each group, and ii) Survey Research involving the undergraduate students of the institution, with a sample size of 1,100 sample participants. Findings indicate the need for services enlargement and enrichment. Factors such as access easiness, processes agility, and greater disclosure of the services are relevant to the process of choice of self-services. Therefore, some actions are proposed in order to promote the effective use of self-service Technologies enabled by the educational institution, among them improvements in the interface, online support to answer questions, and availability of tutorials and videos, to facilitate the access and the use of services by the students.