Service quality variation in retail banking: A comparative analysis

Customers all over the world have become more quality conscious. Hence, providing better service quality is vital, as banks have to compete for customers. Service quality is about meeting customers’ needs and requirements, and how well the service level delivered matches customer expectations. Delivering higher levels of service quality is the strategy that is increasingly being offered as a key to service provider’s efforts to position themselves more effectively in the marketplace. Almost all banks perform same functions; therefore, customer takes into account the relative efficiency while choosing a particular bank. Under such circumstances customer’s decision to patronize one and not the other is based on quality of services offered to them. In view of this widespread belief, an attempt has been made in the present study to evaluate the variation in service quality provided by the four leading banks in northern India with a view to offer suggestions to make overall service quality in banks more effective and efficient. Based on the data gathered from one thousand two hundred (1200) respondents, the study brought to light that there is service quality variation between the sample organisations on all five dimensions of service quality and suggests improvement to augment the quality of bank services.