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.