Measuring Service Quality in Malaysian Local Government: The SERVQUAL Approach

Local governments are regarded as an important agency in providing services to the citizens and critical element in this regards will be the quality of the services rendered by these agencies. This study is designed to examine the relationships between attributes of service quality i.e. SERVQUAL methodology with the effectiveness of services provided by a local government in Malaysia. A total of two hundred completed questionnaires were collected and was analyzed using SPSS. While overall findings indicated that all the five service quality attributes i.e. reliability, assurance, tangible, empathy and responsiveness had shown positive relationship between these attributes and the effectiveness of the services provided by local government, more proactive initiatives can be taken to continuously improve the quality of services provided in line with the increasing demand from the citizens. Therefore, relevant recommendations were proposed to the local authority in order to be relevant in providing services in the eyes of Malaysians.