The Effect of Employee Competence on Consumer Satisfaction with Trust as a Moderating Variable at BPJS Ketenagakerjaan Tangerang Batuceper Branch

Abstract

This study aims to analyze the influence of employee competence on consumer (participant) satisfaction and examine the role of trust as a moderating variable in this relationship at BPJS Ketenagakerjaan Tangerang Batuceper Branch. The background of this study was driven by public complaints regarding the Old Age Security (JHT) claim process, technical constraints of digital applications, and officer responses that were considered less than optimal, which indicated the need to improve service quality by strengthening competence and trust. The research method used was a quantitative approach with a survey method. The research sample consisted of 40 respondents who were BPJS Ketenagakerjaan service users in Batuceper, Tangerang, who were taken using a sampling technique from the average monthly user population. Data were collected through questionnaires and analyzed using simple linear regression and Moderated Regression Analysis (MRA) with the help of SPSS hardware. The results showed that employee competence had a positive and significant influence on participant satisfaction with a contribution of 65.3%. Based on the t-test, the value of $t_{count}$ was 8.449 > $t_{table}$ 2.026 with a significance of 0.000. Furthermore, the results of the MRA test show that the trust variable is proven to significantly strengthen the influence of competence on consumer satisfaction with a significance value of 0.018 < 0.05. This moderation model is able to explain the variation in participant satisfaction by 78.1%. The conclusion of this study confirms that increasing employee competence accompanied by integrity to build customer trust is very effective in increasing public satisfaction. The implications of the study suggest that BPJS Ketenagakerjaan should focus on continuous training, strengthening service ethics, and information transparency to maintain participant loyalty and satisfaction in the digital era.