Service quality and customer satisfaction: a case study of the Sultan Iskandar Federal Complex cafeteria in Kuching / Joshua Mariyam Duum

The relationship between service quality and customer satisfaction has attracted the attention of many scholars. There has been considerable amount ofresearch carried out in the past few years to study the nature of the exact relationship between service quality and customer satisfaction, including in the food and restaurant industry. Likewise, this study was carried out to examine the service quality ofthe cafeteria in a government premise in Kuching. Based on the five dimensions of service quality, ie. tangible, reliability, responsiveness, assurance and empathy, 22 statements were prepared forming the Service Quality constructs and 3 statements to represent Customer Satisfaction. These statements form an intergral part of the questionnaire which was distributed to 250 respondents to collect the data for the study. 197 questionnaires were returned and analyzed. Using the SPSS software, the data was processed to generate relevant outputs for predicting the research outcome. Based on this analysis, the standard ofservice quality ofthe cafeteria at the Sultan Iskandar Federal Complex was found to be poor, resulting in low customer satisfaction. In view of the importance of the service provided by the cafeteria, in catering for the needs ofthe general public as well as staff ofthe government departments at the said complex, it is crucial for the cafeteria operator to improve the standard ofthe service quality provided.