Measuring the service quality ofscheduled commercial banks at the grassroots level of Assam

Banking sector reforms are logical extension of market oriented economic reforms pursued in India since 1991. Reform measures were aimed to increase efficiency and robustness of the sector. The paper is based on a study to examine the impact of reforms on operational efficiency of banking at the grassroots. The study examines whether service quality varies across types of service suppliers and category of users. With the entry of private banks the banking sector has gone for many transformations including the way how the services are extended. In a backward state like Assam, this has arrived little late but the changes are visible. The paper has tried to capture the service quality standards of the scheduled commercial banks (SCBs) and also for the different bank groups in order to make a comparison. The SERVPERF scale is used to study the responds of the customers in Tezpurtown. The study reveals that the private sector banks are far ahead of the public sector banks in terms of quality of service. The private banks influence the service quality of the SCBs the most among all the bank groups. Overall, the public sector banks, which are the dominant market players, will have to work hard to catch the level of the private banks.