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Quality has become a crucial concern for the successful survival of any organization in a competitive environment. With the aim of determining service quality of multiple public and private agricultural extension service providers in Bangladesh this research adopted SERVQUAL model proposed by Parasuraman, Zeithaml and Berry (1990). A total of 318 randomly selected farmer respondents from nine selected organizations were interviewed on a face to face setting using the structured interview schedule. Probable causes impede service quality were identified using qualitative methods, such as key informant interviews, focus group discussions and informal interviews. According to Z statistics all the selected organizations represented a significant negative breach between perceived and expected ratings on all the service quality dimensions viz. tangibles, reliability, responsiveness, assurance, and empathy. Regression analysis confirmed that all the five selected dimensions of service quality can describe 74.6% variation in client satisfaction with the extension service in Bangladesh. Bringing program flexibility, offering rapid service, willingness to help clients, maintaining client records, and keeping the promise are some common areas of service improvement, need consideration for all kinds of service providers. Major impediments of service quality were less logistic support, scarcity of fund for doing practical extension programs, less use of information communication technology, lack of co-ordination among research-extension and extension service providers themselves, political interference, etc.

Quality has become a crucial concern for the successful survival of any organization in a competitive environment. With the aim of determining service quality of multiple public and private agricultural extension service providers in Bangladesh this research adopted SERVQUAL model proposed by Parasuraman, Zeithaml and Berry (1990). A total of 318 randomly selected farmer respondents from nine selected organizations were interviewed on a face to face setting using the structured interview schedule. Probable causes impede service quality were identified using qualitative methods, such as key informant interviews, focus group discussions and informal interviews. According to Z statistics all the selected organizations represented a significant negative breach between perceived and expected ratings on all the service quality dimensions viz. tangibles, reliability, responsiveness, assurance, and empathy. Regression analysis confirmed that all the five selected dimensions of service quality can describe 74.6% variation in client satisfaction with the extension service in Bangladesh. Bringing program flexibility, offering rapid service, willingness to help clients, maintaining client records, and keeping the promise are some common areas of service improvement, need consideration for all kinds of service providers. Major impediments of service quality were less logistic support, scarcity of fund for doing practical extension programs, less use of information communication technology, lack of co-ordination among research-extension and extension service providers themselves, political interference, etc.

Quality has become a crucial concern for the successful survival of any organization in a competitive environment. With the aim of determining service quality of multiple public and private agricultural extension service providers in Bangladesh this research adopted SERVQUAL model proposed by Parasuraman, Zeithaml and Berry (1990). A total of 318 randomly selected farmer respondents from nine selected organizations were interviewed on a face to face setting using the structured interview schedule. Probable causes impede service quality were identified using qualitative methods, such as key informant interviews, focus group discussions and informal interviews. According to Z statistics all the selected organizations represented a significant negative breach between perceived and expected ratings on all the service quality dimensions viz. tangibles, reliability, responsiveness, assurance, and empathy. Regression analysis confirmed that all the five selected dimensions of service quality can describe 74.6% variation in client satisfaction with the extension service in Bangladesh. Bringing program flexibility, offering rapid service, willingness to help clients, maintaining client records, and keeping the promise are some common areas of service improvement, need consideration for all kinds of service providers. Major impediments of service quality were less logistic support, scarcity of fund for doing practical extension programs, less use of information communication technology, lack of co-ordination among research-extension and extension service providers themselves, political interference, etc.