Research and Conclusion
Research and Conclusion
Research and Conclusion
EVALUATING CUSTOMER
SATISFACTION
IN BANKING SERVICES
Irina BENA
Academy of Economic Studies, Bucharest,
Romania
Piata Romana no. 6, sector 1, Bucharest
e-mail: irina.bena@gmail.com
1. Introduction
144
Evaluating customer satisfaction in banking services
Following, the paper presents a survey conducted in the spring of 2009 with
the aim of evaluating the customers’ satisfaction for a Romanian bank.
145
Management & Marketing
The demographic data shows that 34% of the respondents are between 18 and
25 years old, 28% between 26 and 40 years old, 32% between 40 and 55 years old and
6% are older than 55 years (Figure 1). The large number of young customers is
consistent with the banks recent effort to attract and retain customers from the young
segment. The income shares are distributed from 14% for customers with less than
500 lei income to 12% for customers with more than 2.000 Lei income (Figure 2).
The frequency of use for the banking services (Figure 3) reveals that 34%
interact regularly with the bank, 50% use banking services once or twice a month,
14% declared they only rarely use banking services. 60% of the respondents declared
themselves to be very satisfied or satisfied (Figure 4). The relatively large number of
indecided answers (36%) draws the attention to one of the problems that may surface
with the rating skales – respondens often tend to choose the “middle way” instead of
deciding upon one side or the other.
In order to assess the satisfaction in relation to the banks personnel four
attributes were used. The customers were asked to state their satisfaction level
regarding the staff’s attention, professionalism, understanding of their needs and
politeness. In average, the satisfaction level reaches values between 3,52 and 3,8
146
Evaluating customer satisfaction in banking services
(Figure 5) – meaning that customers are quite content with the way the staff is
interacting with them.
These results fail to help indicate a proper course of action for the bank’s
branch. Consequently it is important to try to look „under the hood”. It is known that
most customers tend to simply indicate that their satisfied with the service they
receive. Also, these „satisfied” customers are not the ones advocating on the behalf of
the bank. They are satisfied and quite.
For this reason, customers with extreme responses (very satisfied and very
dissatisfied) are more interesting. As dissatisfied customers engage in greater word of
mouth than satisfied ones (Anderson, 1998), it is worth to take also the extreme
answers into account. Attention, professionalism and understanding of needs only
have positive extreme answers; politeness registering the most. For politeness there
are also negative extreme answers (Figure 6). Still, the ratio of negative and positive
extremes is favorable for the banks personnel: only one of seven customers indicated
they were very dissatisfied.
147
Management & Marketing
The analysis of the extreme responses offers a view of the areas the bank’s
management needs to address (Figure 8). The negative/positive answers ratio reveals
worrisome values the banks reaction to complaints (5) and communication with the
bank (3).
148
Evaluating customer satisfaction in banking services
4. Conclusions
As the conducted survey points out, there are some of the problems that
surface in the effort of evaluating customers’ satisfaction. First, the dimensions of
satisfaction have to be established according to the area of business and the company’s
specifics. Even in the frame of banking there are differences – for instance in the
service portfolio or the interaction procedure. Secondly, customers tend to state they
are satisfied or check an undecided response. Therefore the scale for future surveys to
be conducted within the bank should eliminate the middle way answers, obliging the
customer to adopt a positive or negative position.
For the future the specifics of banking activity like credit and deposit; private,
retail and corporate activity should be addressed in a direct manner in order to
emphasize the differences between the different types of customers and address their
problems appropriately. Extending the survey on other branches of the bank may point
out differences between the satisfaction levels of their customers. The question arises
if the satisfaction of the customers is depended on the activity and process
management of the branch or if there are some aspects that need to be addressed top-
down from the banks central.
The benefits of such surveys represent not only a clearer picture of the
customers but also an overview of the areas the branch needs to improve. In
this manner the bank has the chance to accede to a higher customer satisfaction
level and maintain a strong relationship with its clients. This may not prevent
149
Management & Marketing
panic withdrawals during a severe financial crisis but may help prevent
customers to migrate to other banks in times when the bank is more than ever
depended on them.
References
Cadotte, E.R., Woodruff, R.B., Jenkins, R.L. (1987), „Expectations and norms in models of
consumer satisfaction”, Journal of Marketing Research, vol. 24, no. 3, pp. 305-314
Clerfeuille, F., Poubanne, Y., Vakrilova, M., Petrova, G. (2008), „Evaluation of consumer
satisfaction using the tetra-class model”, Research in Social and Administrative Pharmacy,
vol. 4, no. 3, pp. 258–271
Eggert, A., Ulaga, W. (2002), „Customer perceived value: a substitute for satisfaction in business
markets?”, Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing, Vol. 17, No. 2/3, pp. 107-118
Garbarino, E., Johnson, M.S. (1999), „The different roles of satisfaction, trust, and
commitment in customer relationships”, The Journal of Marketing, vol. 63, no. 2, pp. 70-87
Gil, I., Berenguer, G., Cervera, A. (2008), „The roles of service encounters, service value, and
job satisfaction in achieving customer satisfaction in business relationships”, Industrial
Marketing Management, vol. 37, Issue 8, pp. 921-939
Kotorov, R. (2003), „Customer relationship management: strategic lessons and future
directions”, Business Process Management Journal, vol. 9, no. 5, pp. 566-571
Lindgreen, A., Palmer, R., Vanhamme, J., Wouters, J. (2006), „A relationship management
assessment tool: Questioning, identifying, and prioritizing critical aspects of customer
relationships”, Industrial Marketing Management, vol. 35, Issue 1, pp. 57-71
Manrai, L.A., Manrai, A.K. (2007), „A field study of customers’ switching behavior for bank
services”, Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, vol. 14, Issue 3, pp. 208-215
Mendoza, L.E., Marius, A., Pérez, M., Grimán, A.C. (2007), „Critical success factors for a
customer relationship management strategy”, Information and Software Technology, vol.
49, Issue 8, pp. 913-945
Peyton, R.M., Pitts, S., Kamary, R.H. (2003), „Consumer satisfaction/dissatisfaction (CS/D): a
review of the literature prior to the 1990s”, Proceedings of the Academy of Organizational
Culture, Communications and Conflict, vol. 7, no. 2, pp. 41-46
Ravald, A., Grönroos, C. (1996), „The value concept and relationship marketing”, European
Journal of Marketing, vol. 30, no. 2, pp. 19-30
Wirtz, J. (1994), „Consumer satisfaction with services: integrating recent perspectives in
services marketing with the traditional satisfaction model”, Asia Pacific Advances in
Consumer Research, vol. 1, pp. 153-159
Anderson, E.W. (1998), „Customer Satisfaction and Word of Mouth”, Journal of Service
Research, vol. 1, no. 1, pp. 5-17
150