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Gulf Bank’s service excellence “scorecard” was developed to support the Bank’s delivery of superior service in its market sector. The “scorecard” provides focus for a “service excellence” program, setting standards and measuring performance against customer focused objectives. The approach identified the “drivers” of customer satisfaction, related these to the Bank’s service delivery channels, set performance standards, and implemented measurement and reporting systems embracing external customer feedback and internal process measurements. Performance was measured against 16 key “drivers” of customer satisfaction identified independently by the local industry institute and related to the Bank’s delivery channels (branches, ATMs, telephone, Internet). Key measures were: customer satisfaction, complaints, comments and attrition, plus internal process delivery performance for critical products (consumer loans and credit card services). Reports were produced weekly and monthly with “drill downs” from bank to individual branch and/or employee levels. Reports are reviewed by management from chairman down to branch manager level. Results are incorporated in business KPIs and have become factors in employee incentive schemes. The approach adopted by the bank demonstrated that a practical, comprehensive service quality management system could be implemented and used to drive service improvement. The approach can be adopted by other banks and financial institutions and adapted to the needs of other service industries. The process implemented by Gulf Bank is believed to be unique in the Kuwait banking community and has scope for application in many similar environments outside the local area.

The purpose of this paper is to assess the antecedent of satisfaction and loyalty in the context of a multi-channel banking environment. Multi-channel banking involves both branch and electronic banking channels through which the customers interact with the bank.

The study involved a customer survey of 229 respondents, which used a convenience sampling approach through intercepts and interviews held at bank branches. A structured questionnaire was used, and data were analyzed using structural equation modeling.

While examining factors such as perceived ease of use, branch service quality evaluation, satisfaction, and loyalty, it is observed, using structural equation modeling, that perceived ease of use and branch service quality are antecedents to satisfaction and satisfaction positively affects the loyalty.

Although it is realized that digital banking will positively influence loyalty, the role of branch service quality cannot be ignored. The role played by the ease of use is higher than branch service quality evaluations.

This work analyzes the effect that service company employee behavior has on customer perceptions of the quality of services received, and the consequent company performance. Organizational citizenship behavior has been recognized as relevant behavior of some employees, but its role regarding customer perceptions and company profitability remains unexplored. Beginning with a brief review of the conceptual background of organizational citizenship behavior, service quality, and its consequences, this paper proposes a model to test these relationships empirically. Some helpful recommendations for managing service companies are presented.

The purpose of this study is to explore how the adoption of an internal marketing (IM) programme in a retail banking setting enhances some positive employee behaviours that promote customer perceived service quality.

A multilevel research design is adopted which draws evidence from branch managers, employees and customers in order to investigate whether branch manager’s adoption of an IM philosophy affects front-line employee responsiveness to the firm’s IM strategies and their levels of motivation, empowerment and organizational identification (OI), respectively.

Results indicate that manager’s IM adoption can enhance employee adoption of IM and raises their levels of motivation, empowerment and OI. The moderating role of manager-employee dissimilarity is also discussed. Finally, findings confirm that employee motivation, empowerment and OI affect customer perceptions of service quality.

This study provides an important shift by formally including IM into multilevel marketing research and establishes another link in the IM-organizational performance relationship, uncovering some behavioural routes through which the positive effects of IM can add to the achievement of firm’s external marketing objectives.

Features a case study of a major bank which aimed to achieve corporate transformation and a dramatic improvement in service quality. The links between service quality, customer satisfaction and corporate profitability in UK banking are outlined in order to set in context the many quality improvement initiatives undertaken by UK retail banks in recent years. Business process re‐engineering has proved to be the most popular of service quality initiatives but most have been limited to single processes rather than corporate transformation as portrayed in the case study. The five‐year corporate transformation programme focuses on employee communications, the redesign of work, recruitment and reward processes and the introduction of consumer research‐based national quality standards. The bank was rewarded for its efforts, coming top for three consecutive years in the Which? service quality surveys and, according to its own data, which contributed to a rise in customer satisfaction and customer retention at a time of declining employee satisfaction. Future developments in service quality segmentation and a working definition of service quality are proposed.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effects of an emotional intelligence (EI) training program on: the EI of service providers; and the service quality provided by employees who have received such training.

Employees of five branches of a large public‐sector bank in Iran are randomly selected as the “treatment group” to undertake a tailored eight‐session EI training program, while employees of another homogenous sample of five branches are selected as the “control group” (involving no EI training). EI is measured by the ECI‐2 instrument before and after training. Two samples of customers (150 customers of the “treatment branches” and 150 customers of the “control branches”) are utilised to evaluate the perceived service quality of both groups of branches before the training and two months after the training.

One of four dimensions of EI (“relationship management”) is found to be enhanced by EI training. Moreover, the EI training program is shown to result in improved service quality in terms of both overall service quality and its four dimensions (“reliability”, “responsiveness”, “assurance”, and “empathy”).

Operational constraints prevented a second assessment of the EI of employees in the control group. The post‐training evaluations had to be conducted shortly after the training finished, thus preventing an assessment of longer‐term effects.

This is one of the first studies to have undertaken empirical investigation of the effectiveness of EI training in a service setting.

Concerned with modelling the impact of customer‐employee relationships on customer retention rates in a major UK retail bank. Reveals that employee and customer perceptions of service quality are related to customer retention rates and that employee and customer perceptions of service quality are related to each other.

Customer satisfaction is increasingly considered to be a basic determinant of business success, one that has considerable effect on firm performance (customer retention, re‐purchase and profitability). Seeks to add to previous but limited attempts to assess the service providers’ understanding of the satisfaction of their customers. The indirect assessment of customer satisfaction draws on management’s ability to differentiate between the quality of the provided services as perceived by themselves and as they think it is perceived by their customers. Develops a service satisfaction construct by making use of previous research instruments that have been developed to assess customer satisfaction from the customers’ perspective. Contests and tests empirically a five‐dimensional construct which comprises interactive, corporate, physical, price and convenience dimensions. Uses empirical data from a sample of 270 retail bank managers in Greece in order to test the hypotheses.

The purpose of this study is to explore how service employee choice and use of language to initiate and maintain conversation with second generation immigrant customers (SGIC) influence customer evaluation of the service encounter, and whether such employee acts may lead customers to employee switching, branch switching (i.e. switching from one to another location within the same brand) and/or brand switching (switching to another brand altogether).

A scenario-based between-subjects experiment of 4 (employee: match, adapt, bilingual, no adapt) × 2 (fast food, post office) × 2 (English, Spanish) was used to examine the SGIC response to service encounters in different contexts arising from employee choice and use of language. These scenarios were complemented with a series of measurement scales. The instruments, which were identical except in scenario sections, were administered on 788 second-generation Mexican American customers, resulting in 271 (fast food) and 265 (post office) effective responses.

In both service contexts, when employees initiated conversation that matched (English or Spanish) the customer expectations, the SGIC perceptions of interaction quality was higher as compared to other scenarios, leading to subsequent satisfaction and lower switching intentions (employee and branch). Similarly, interaction quality was higher for adapt scenarios as compared to bilingual or no adapt scenarios. Bilingual customers perceived higher interaction quality in bilingual/no-adapt scenarios when compared to monolingual customers. In both contexts, service quality and satisfaction were associated with employee switching and branch switching, but not with brand switching.

By utilizing interaction adaptation theory to conceptualize the effects of employee choice and use of language, the study grounds the model and the hypotheses in theoretical bases and provides empirical corroboration of the theory. The study also contributes toward understanding the service encounters from the perspective of an overlooked group of vulnerable customers: second-generation immigrants.

Service research cautions service providers that a key factor in attracting and retaining customers is having detailed communication guidelines and empowering employees to follow those guidelines. The findings go a step further and underscore the critical role of communication from a managerial standpoint. It is in the interest of service organizations to develop guidelines that will govern employee choice and use of language during service encounters. So doing is commercially justified because unguided employee choice and use of language can result in customer switching and attrition.

The juxtaposition between assigned versus asserted identities is an important one not only in social sciences but also within service research. As service encounters grow increasingly multicultural, the need to educate employees on multiculturally appropriate communication etiquette rises in importance. The findings should encourage service firms and local governments to develop formal communication guidelines that begin with multiculturalism as a central tenet permeating all aspects of employee–employee, employee–customer and customer–customer communications. Service providers ought to take precautionary measures to ensure customers will be empowered to assert their identities in their own terms, if they wish so.

The study demonstrates how employee choice and use of language during service encounters may thwart SGIC, who might view such employee behaviors as acts of identity assignment and, consequently, feel stigmatized, marginalized and offended; and links such customer experiences to switching behavior through mediatory mechanisms.

Presents an empirical study of major quality improvement initiatives recently undertaken by two British banks. Provides a useful comparison of the two different approaches, and contributes new evidence on the current debate concerning the validity of the SERVQUAL model. First outlines the implementation of the SERVQUAL model, the bank’s subsequent quality improvement programme, and evidence of an improvement in customer satisfaction. Second, included for comparative purposes, describes the adoption and implementation of the Crosby total quality training programme. In both cases relevant evidence was gathered on staff attitudes. Given the long‐term nature of these comprehensive quality programmes, any evaluation must necessarily be tentative, but both banks are able to report an improvement in service quality, and fresh evidence is provided in support of the SERVQUAL model.