Customer service quality in a public agency in Malaysia: towards a customer- focused public organization

Abstract

This study focuses on customer service quality in a public agency in Malaysia. The role of this agency is to provide technical advice to government departments ondevelopment of projects. However, there are many government departments that implement projects on their own and do not always prefer this agency as their main implementer of projects. This shows the inability of this agency in meeting its customer needs. An awareness program towards improvement in customer service was introduced in 2007 but progress was rather slow. This study attempts to determine the gap between customer expectation and customer perception of the current service quality and the perceived service quality of the agency. Data were collected from various government agencies usingSERVQUAL questionnaire survey. Results showed that dimension of reliability werethe most critical area of improvement for the agency. Overall, service quality was perceived to be moderate.