IMPACT OF THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC ON THE QUALITY OF CUSTOMER SERVICE IN THE LOCAL GOVERNMENT UNITS

Abstract

Maintaining an adequate level of services becomes a particularly difficult challenge in the current conditions of the COVID-19 pandemic, which greatly complicates the organization and implementation of tasks assigned to public entities. Therefore, it was deemed important to determine the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, considered in the context of global risk, on the quality of customer service in the local government units. In the theoretical part, the investigations presented in this study contain a discussion of public service provision by local government units. The publication includes a study of the concepts of quality and satisfaction. The article also draws attention to the aspect of risk as an indispensable element of business entities in relation to the global risk caused by the SARSCoV-2 virus. The empirical part presents the results of surveys conducted using the Servqual method and the Kruskal-Wallis test. In conclusion, providing high-quality services is a challenge for many local government units. The COVID-19 pandemic has negatively affected the dimensions of reliability and trust that make up the quality of customer service in local government units. This is evidenced by the results which show the deterioration of the quality of customer service during the pandemic. The current situation exacerbates the negative trend resulting from the gap between the perception of the services provided and the actual requirements of the respondents.