<![CDATA[Kabil Port Batam is a strategic port node serving processing industries in the Batam free trade zone, with an entirely corporate user base. This study examines the effect of five service quality dimensions, namely tangible, reliability, responsiveness, assurance, and empathy, on customer satisfaction, both directly and through trust as a mediating variable. A quantitative approach was applied to 394 respondents from approximately 219 user companies selected purposively. Data were analyzed using Partial Least Square Structural Equation Modeling with SmartPLS 4.0 and bootstrapping of 3,000 subsamples. The results show that empathy has a positive and significant effect on customer satisfaction with a coefficient of 0.382, followed by assurance at 0.343. Assurance is the only dimension significantly affecting trust, with a coefficient of 0.254. Tangible, reliability, and responsiveness are not significant, although all three correlate strongly with satisfaction, ranging from 0.795 to 0.825. Trust has no significant effect on customer satisfaction and does not mediate any service quality dimension. The model explains 79.4 percent of the variance in customer satisfaction. This study contributes by demonstrating that satisfaction and trust in business-to-business port services are formed through different mechanisms, namely satisfaction through the quality of personal interaction and trust through institutional assurance]]>
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