ABSTRACT
Banks competition for customers has become aggressive over the years. It is
no longer the norm for banks to wait for customers to come to them as this
used to happen when there were few banks and it was a sellers market. With
the post Structural Adjustment era, the number of banks has increased with
each bank adopting its own strategy to jostle for customers and retain them.
Nearly all banks offer the same products; banks must find a way to
distinguish themselves in the eyes of the customer and clearly, a distinction
in the total package of the offering lies in service quality. This is the ability
to delight the customer by meeting and continuously exceeding the
expectation of your customers. Satisfied customers have a tendency to use
the bank that they are most comfortable with. This study seeks to find out if
improved service quality in banks would result in increased profitability
because customers are happy with the services offered by the bank and
thereby tend to use the bank more often. First Bank of Nigeria PLC (FBN)
was used in this study as they have demonstrated a remarkable difference in
their total offering in the last six (6) years. To test for how satisfied the FBN
customers are, a questionnaire reflecting a varying degree of responses,
from “strongly agreed” to “strongly disagree” were administered on
respondents of the bank customers within the Island, irrespective of the type
of accounts they operate.
A sample of 388 was drawn from a population of
13,000 of which responses were obtained from 380 respondents. Hypothesis
was tested to find out if adopting service quality initiatives would bring
about customer satisfaction and loyalty. The results indicate that, once the
right and consistent quality of service was delivered, the customer will make
repeat buys and stay loyal. Another set of questionnaire was administered
to Management Staff of FBN to find out what they were doing to improve
service quality and if improving service quality would result in increased
profitability. The researcher used all members of Management, from,
Assistant General Managers to the Managing Director, numbering 46. 42
responses were obtained. Results indicate that FBN Plc, is doing a lot to
improve quality service, they are aware of the importance of service quality
and indeed profitability has improved over 300% since they adopted service
quality initiatives. For banks to achieve a high level of service quality, they
must first, appraise where they are, what they hope to achieve and how they
would get there. Once this is identified, strategies would be mapped out as
to how to achieve this objective. It is a continuous process, as banks must
constantly improve on their processes and offerings to continuously delight
the customer and remain competitive in a crowded market place.
