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The purpose of this paper is to investigate the expectations and quality gaps in services provided at city public health clinics in the city of Natal, Brazil, from the perspective of patients and healthcare service providers.

The research sample consisted of 1,200 patients who used public health services and 265 providers – doctors, nutritionists, physiotherapists, psychologists, pharmacists and managers at three health clinics in the city of Natal, Brazil. A scale with 25 health service attributes was used in data collection. Summary statistics and t-test were used to analyze the data.

The results show that the providers think that users have lower levels of expectations than those indicated by the users in all attributes. Providers and users have the most approximate insights into what attributes are considered most important: explanations, level of knowledge and attention dispensed by health professionals. Users and providers perceived similar quality gaps for most of the attributes. The gaps were statistically the same, when comparing the mean quality shortcomings by means of a Student’s test, considering a significance level of 5 percent, obtained independently by the manifestation of users and providers.

The results reveal only a photograph of the moment. The study did not consider the differences that may exist between groups with different income levels, genders or age groups. A qualitative study could improve the understanding of the differences and coincidences of the diverse points of views. A more advanced research could even study possibilities so that health managers could promote changes in the service, some of them low cost, as the health professionals training for contact with patients.

The evaluation of the service quality complemented by the matrix of opportunities, importance × quality gaps generates information to help make decisions in the rational allocation of available resources and improvement of the quality of the service delivered to patients. Besides, it offers a focus to prioritize specific actions.

It is important to compare the perceptions of service quality between patients and the healthcare service providers who work in direct contact with them. The managers can smooth out these differences and ensure, over time, customer satisfaction. In this study, providers were asked to express what they think about the expectations of patients and about their own service performance delivered. Thus, not only the traditional gap 5 was measured, but it was also possible to evaluate the distance between what providers think that patients need and their actual needs.

The purpose of this paper is to examine, through a longitudinal study, undergraduate student perceptions of service expectations, priorities and quality of the higher education institution that they attend, using an importance–performance rating matrix.

This research was carried out with students exposed to a new type of educational program that combines face-to-face encounters with distance learning experiences. Respondents belong to five graduate courses in management. Data collection was performed at five different time points, targeting all attending students as they continued their studies.

The findings showed that the students’ expectations of the set of factor-defined dimensions and attributes studied increased notably over time. Senior students tended to be more demanding than beginning students. Aside from the comfort levels of the classroom, the attributes rated as most important by the majority of students were directly linked to the professors, whether with respect to their practical experience, teaching methods, motivation or training received. This was the case at each stage of data collection.

The importance × performance gaps matrix offers managers at higher education institutions with information to support decisions, especially with regard to setting priorities. The information obtained enables managers to align actions with emerging areas of need, and effectively direct resources to ensure student satisfaction, retention and loyalty. Using importance ratings taken at different stages of student interaction with the institution was found to be useful at the institution investigated. Institutions could attract new student customers by meeting expectations with such trend data.

The current research captured students’ changes in expectations of their undergraduate coursework that combined classroom and distance learning approaches. In addition, the study documented variations over time in students’ perceptions on key service areas. The paper provides data on student-perceived priorities, quality gaps and criticality levels, seen both at a level of aggregate dimensions and at the level of individual service attributes.