Fuzzy Linguistic for Measuring Customer Satisfaction

Customers’ satisfaction is one of the very important keys in ever challenging market. There are many approaches that have been used to evaluate customers satisfaction. This paper proposes an evaluation of customer satisfaction from the perceived service quality using fuzzy linguistic. A twenty three-item questionnaire was distributed to thirty four judges who being asked about the services provided by a hypermarket in Kuala Terengganu, Malaysia. Data collected were analyzed using a fuzzy linguistic evaluation model. The judges give their current state of perception about service quality in linguistic terms. Data in form of linguistic terms were quantified into fuzzy triangular numbers with their respective weight for each criterion. The level of customer satisfactions was determined by considering the minimum value of a difference between total integral value and integral value for each linguistic term. The judges agree that the level of satisfaction was at the ‘middle’ with degree of optimism at 0.5. The findings suggest that linguistic evaluation is practical and meaningful in measuring customer satisfaction. Keyword: Fuzzy logic; customer satisfaction; fuzzy numbers; linguistic evaluation