Service quality in Indian banks: Lessons and future outlook

Apart from attracting new potential customers, business organizations, these days, realize the importance of retaining the existing customers. Developing long-term relationship with latter, requires the firms to ensure customer delight through quality service. Hence, to have a competitive edge, companies/multinational companies are focusing on service quality. In this study, an attempt has been made to examine & measure the quality of services provided by commercial banks (both public & private sector) in India. An Empirical survey is conducted to determine expectations and perceptions of the quality of services offered by selected commercial banks. The scope of the present study is limited to urban areas only. The SERVQUAL instrument developed by Parasuraman, Zeithmal and Barry has been used as the measurement of service quality in banks. The study brings out that the actual delivery of service by both public & private sector banks in India falls short of the expectations of customers on a large majority of the elements of service quality. Nevertheless, private sector banks were found having an edge over public sector banks in terms of quality of services being offered to customers.