Service quality is the assessment of expectations with performance. Quality customer service should be of a highest priority for any enterprise, or any bank. Success of a service provider depends on the high quality relationship with customers which defines customer satisfaction and loyalty (Jones, 2002 as cited by Lymperopoulos et al., 2006). Satisfaction is an overall customer attitude or behaviour towards a service provider, or an emotional reaction towards the difference between what customers expect and what they receive, regarding the fulfillment of some desires, needs or goals (Hansemark, & Albinsson, 2004; Kotler, 2000; Hoyer, & MacInnis, 2001). Customer loyalty, on the other hand, is the result of an organization’s generating benefit
However, (Giese & Cote, 2002) referred to customer satisfaction as 1) a response which is either cognitive or emotional 2) the response pertains to a certain focus (expectations or experience) 3) the response happens at a particular time. From their review, they observed that customer satisfaction had three main aspects; it is a response arising from a particular focus at a particular time. The definition pulls us closer to a greater understanding of customer satisfaction. (Anton, 1996) as cited in (Abdallat & Emam, n.d.) describes customer satisfaction as a state of mind where the customers’ needs, wants and expectations are met or exceeded over the product life or the service life. As (Kotler and Keller, 2006) simply put it, satisfaction is a person’s feelings of pleasure or disappointment which resulted from a product’s perceived outcome against his/her expectation (cited in “Concepts of Customer” 2012).
Yet, customer satisfaction is allowed as a particular act on a certain decision. Many investigators proved service quality as an important operation of customer satisfaction such as (Cronin & Taylor 1992, Oliver 1997, Lee, Lee & Yoo 2000; Ting 2004 & Kim et al 2009). Likewise, Cronin and Taylor (1992) explain that an effective customer satisfaction is guided by an extreme service quality but still cost, affective estimations and individual agents are affected to the customer satisfaction. Steven et al., (1995) argues that “consumer is impatient and sophisticated, if your restaurant isn’t providing satisfaction service and value, the customer will leave
Organisations armed with the right information about customer satisfaction can use it to better target services to their customers’ needs or better manage customer expectation by improving the way program benefits are communicated. This information also allows organisations to improve those aspects of service delivery which are most important to customers , focusing time and resources more effectively. It is important to note that the measurement of customer satisfaction is not the same as measuring overall service quality but one distinct part of an integrated framework for analysing service quality and efficacy. A broader quality improvement framework would likely include methods and processes to measure unmet service demand, customer outcomes, evaluation of external programs impacting on customers and support for continuous quality improvement . While customer satisfaction measurement at its most basic level generally involves some form of survey to elicit this information about customer satisfaction, this is only one part of an ongoing service improvement cycle.
Service quality is the comparison of perceived expectations with perceived performance of service, perceived expectations is given by E , perceived performance is given by P and service quality is SQ which gives an equation SQ = P – E . The business which gives services of high quality will meet or exceed customers expectations which make the business economically competitive, customers form the service expectations from past experience, word of mouth and marketing communications. Service quality can be related to service potential , service process and service result. Individual service quality states the service quality of employees as distinct from that the customers perceived. Services are commodities that cannot be stored or disappear
Assurance ie., knowledge and courtesy of employees and their ability to convey trust and confidence; and 5. Empathy ie., individualized attention the facility provides to its customers. Finn & Lamb (1991) agree that the aforementioned constructs are important aspects of service quality, but Cronin & Taylor (1992) have been skeptical about whether these dimensions are applicable when evaluating service quality in other service industries. On the basis of their review of service quality literature, McDougall and Levesque (ibid), argued that there are two overriding dimensions to service quality. The first one being the core or outcome aspects (contractual) of the service, and the second being the relational or process aspects (customer-employee relationship) of the service.
Customer satisfaction must not be described as a goal in its place, it should be considered as a means for improving the company's performance (Martensen et al., 2000). During the 1990s, there was a popular realization that satisfaction ratings have been in actual fact a means for attaining strategic purposes, such as customer retention which is considered to affect companies' profits directly (Reichheld,
According to Antony et al. (2004), the concept of service quality has gained increasing popularity since its incep-tion in the late 1970s. Due to its significant impact on business performance, cost sav-ing, customer satisfaction, customer loyalty and profitability; service quality has become a main area of attention among practitioners, managers and researchers (Seth et al. 2005). Service quality is consumers’ judgment of the excellence and superiority of the service en-counter (Zeithaml and Bitner 2003).
Marketing studies focused on customer satisfaction with physical products and services delivered through channels according to Khalifa and Liu (2002).Customer satisfaction leads to faster market penetration and in turn, to accelerated cash flows and likely acts as underlying mechanism by which customers’ satisfaction affects shareholder value in any industry according to Eugene et al (2003). Communication is vital to any organization in that good communication leads to no deficit or gap between the company and the public there by creating a positive image, this leads customer retention. Many studies explained that customer satisfaction can lead to brand loyalty and repurchase intention. Wang et al., (2004) investigated that customer satisfaction that has a positive result on brand loyalty. Accordingly, Kim et al., (2008) related that customer satisfaction positively influences brand loyalty.
When customers come to the choice of quality, they prefer to check workmanship. If it is high and really carefully made, they think that product is reliable. Quality can be defined broadly as superiority or excellence. Quality is one of the main factors that could influence on consumer perceived values. To check the understanding of quality customer, there are lots of factors that could influence on consumer perceived value however in this thesis quality was chosen as a one of the factors.