The purpose of this paper is to obtain a better understanding of the extent to which service quality is
delivered within the Mauritian public service by drawing on front-line employees (FLE) and customer
perceptions of service quality. The paper investigates how closely customer expectations of service and
FLE perceptions of customer expectations match. SERVQUAL is used to measure service quality amongst
FLE and customers in a major public sector department in Mauritius. The survey captures customers’
expectations of an excellent public service and compares these with their perceptions of the service
delivered by a particular public service department in Mauritius. The paper also reports on a parallel
SERVQUAL survey of FLE to examine how well they understand their customers’ expectations and how
well its internal processes support the delivery of top quality public services.