Innovative Service Quality in the Banking Sector: An Assessment Based on SERVQUAL Measures

The global marketplace has virtually forced the service sector to transform itself into a truly customer-oriented, service-focused enterprise. Service quality innovation results when a firm is able to focus its entire energies to think on behalf of customer for an outcome that surpasses customers’ expectation of superior value. However such initiatives to innovate the service quality have often lead to increasing expectations among customers as well, and hence, constitutes a self created challenge (Kandampully, 2002).In the present study, the focus is on the critical factors determining service quality in the banking sector by using both traditional and modifying SERVQUAL measures (Parasuraman et al. 1983, 1994). The first study is based on responses of customers (N= 305) in a premier nationalized bank in India with regards to “expected” & “perceived” service quality. In another study, responses of customers (N= 200) in the said bank have been analysed by using the modified SERVQUAL measures (Parasuraman, 1995). Analysis of customers’ responses, across 5-dimensions of service quality (in Study-I) and 10-dimensions of service quality (in Study-II), revealed that customers’ perceptions of service quality were poor as compared with their ‘expectations’ from these banks. An analysis of service quality perceptions by the employees of these banks has been made, by taking into account the responses of the bank staff (N=55) on the modified SERVQUAL scale. This paper seeks to identify some critical factors influencing service quality in Indian banks, and could be used as a basis for bankers and researchers in differentiating the good and poor quality of services offered by banks. Its focus is on: How appropriate innovations in banking service could yield benefits in the new organizational arrangements‘ The impact of organizational and technological innovations in Indian banks has also been cited. Findings of this paper could offer interesting information on the level of service quality in the banking sector of a developing economy, i.e. India.