Quality management practices towards customer satisfaction in local authority public services website

Abstract

Malaysian national government undertook a comprehensive initiative in total quality management (TQM) that led to extensive implementation of TQM process in many of the government agencies. However, after more than 20 years of the ‘Excellence Work Culture’ program has been launched, the performance of local governments in Malaysia still receives much criticisms and complaints, suggesting the inability of these institutions in delivering high quality services to meet the expectation of public at large. Hence, this paper investigates the effectiveness of such program via its objectives of determining the current implementation of Quality Management Systems (QMS) at local governments’ organization and evaluating the effect towards the improvement of the Malaysian public service organization. This paper adopts questionnaire survey, websites observations and interviews as its research methodology. Respondents are selected from the people that involved as customers in Kuala Kangsar Municipal Council public services website. There are various backgrounds of people such as executives, non-executives and self-employs. Questionnaire forms were sent out to 100 people throughout Kuala Kangsar. From 63 copies of usable questionnaire, the overall service quality is rating agreeable. The assurance dimension has the highest gap difference between perception and expectation. However, overall results have high expectation on all dimensions of quality management practices towards customer satisfaction in Kuala Kangsar Municipal Council public services website. The outcomes of the study will help local governments in Malaysia understanding better for a process that leads to continual improvements in the organization that, in turn, result in customer satisfaction.