KONSEP PELANGGAN, KEPUASAN PELANGGAN DAN PROSES MENGETAHUI HARAPAN PELANGGAN

Abstract

In today's fiercely competitive education landscape, educational organizations must deeply understand their customers—be it students, parents, or the wider community—as they are the primary determinants of an institution's sustainability and growth. Total Quality Management (TQM) emerges as a holistic approach to ensure service quality not only meets but exceeds customer expectations, as outlined in the books Total Quality Management in Education: Concepts and Implementation (National Library of RI, 2019) and Total Quality Management for Educational Organizations (Kanisius Media, 2024). Customer satisfaction arises from comparing initial expectations with actual product or service performance, influenced by product quality itself, friendly and prompt service, emotional touches like feeling valued, reasonable pricing, and minimal additional costs—as affirmed by Kotler & Armstrong (1999) in marketing contexts and Sumarwan (2003) on satisfaction determinants.Merely grasping the concepts isn't enough; educational institutions need a systematic process to uncover customer expectations: from direct surveys, in-depth interviews, behavioral observations, to data analysis via social media, as recommended by Sugiyono (2017) in Business Research Methods and Tjiptono (2019) in Marketing Strategy. The SERVQUAL model by Parasuraman et al. (1988) serves as a key tool to measure gaps between expectations and perceptions, supplemented by modern indicators like Customer Satisfaction Index (CSI) or Net Promoter Score (NPS) for ongoing evaluation. This qualitative library research, drawing from literature such as Quality Management for Organizational Excellence by Goetsch & Davis (2014) and local journals on TQM in Islamic education, demonstrates that TQM is not just theory but a practical key to building customer loyalty and institutional competitiveness amid evolving societal needs.