Service quality at an Inland Revenue Board's branch office in Malaysia

Abstract

The research is purported to determine the customer satisfaction, service quality and efficiency of the queuing system implemented at service counters of an Inland Revenue Board's (IRB) branch office in Malaysia. The services provided at the counters range from income tax assessment, taxpayer registration, salary deduction and settlement of stamp duties for personal income taxes and transfer of properties. The office operates an M/M/S, single-phased system. A ticker system helps establish a FIFO queue discipline. On the basis of secondary data, the average taxpayer waiting times are much longer at the counters designated for document stamping. The waiting times range from three to 43 minutes. At the outset, it was believed that the prolonged service at the counters could contribute to taxpayers' dissatisfaction. A field survey of 100 taxpayers was conducted to assess, among others, their experiences when queuing for services. The survey results reveal that many respondents were dissatisfied with the long queues, the services were time-consuming, servers were unavailable and lack courtesy, and the equipment breaks down. On the basis of queuing variable values, the service level at the stamping counters appears to be adequate. The high average waiting times of 20 minutes or more occurred on six days in July 2003. Future research could be directed to determining the causes of the delays and determining what constitutes a delay to taxpayers. In addition, an assessment on the expenditures associated with the provision of services, service and waiting cost trade-off, and a survey on availability of knowledge on queuing theory within the organisation would provide a new direction for the research.