Dr Sheerali Arya

Managing Service Quality with Technological Innovations in the Banking Industry Dr Sheerali Arya

Customer satisfaction is paramount to any sector which provides service and needs to sustain its advantage over the competitors. The Banking Industry of India is highly competitive with the advent of recent entrants into the market functioning along with well-established Banks. It becomes imperative for senior management of banks to focus on the quality of services and products offered to customers through world class technological advancements to ensure their growth and retention. Banks need to continuously innovate their technologies and methodologies to remain at the forefront. Even though the different sector of Banks in India are making huge efforts in achieving this objective, there is not enough proof to demonstrate comparative analysis of how customer satisfaction is impacted by the quality of their services, leaving a major gap in the literature. This research, therefore, tries to examine the impact of service quality on customer satisfaction in the Banking Industry of India. The researcher has collected primary data from 850 customers of public, private, and foreign sector banks operating in the northern region of India namely Delhi NCR, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and Punjab. The researcher also took feedback from 50 bankers including one Senior Manager from each Bank to analyze their perspective and initiatives taken at the strategic level to ensure optimum customer satisfaction is provided. The data was collected through a structured questionnaire for both customers and bankers. The secondary data was collected from academic journals, bank annual reports, and credible websites. The aim of this research is specifically to analyze the dimensions of the perceived and expected service quality and its effects on customer satisfaction. The findings show that the customers' expectations of quality of service rendered to them is quite high, continuous in nature, and has a huge impact on their satisfaction levels. The research further highlighted that customer satisfaction is influenced by multiple variables like personalized interaction, environment, monetary benefits, and product worth among others. To enhance the service quality at each branch, banks must concentrate on creating customer-oriented strategies, culture of empathized service, and adopt a persistent approach to remove all service-related gaps.