3. RESULTS OF AN EMPIRICAL INVESTIGATION
In 2004, a field research has been implemented to measure bank service quality in one of Iranian leading banks (Bank Refah).[7] The primary objectives of this research were to answer the following research questions:
1. What factors affect on bank service quality?
2. What are the relative importance weights of bank service quality dimensions from stand points of the customers and employees?
3. How about the gaps between customers and employees expectations and bank actual performance?
4. How customers and employees score bank service quality?
5. Statistically, is there a meaningful difference between two sets of the relative importance weights were defined by customers and employees?
First question was answered by literature review. To answer the second and the third questions, an adjusted SERVQUAL questionnaire was designed and distributed among bank customers and employees. (See Appendix 1) The questionnaire was included 8 quality dimensions with 32 quality factors or elements. To answer the fourth question, four classical service quality measurement methods (SERVQUAL, weighted SERVQUAL, SERVPERF and weighted SERVPERF) were applied. Also, in order to determine the relative importance weights for weighted SERVQUAL and weighted SERVPERF models, Shannon Entropy Method was used. Finally, the fifth and the sixth questions were answered by using statistical methods.
[Insert Table 1 near here]
In summary, this research had the following implications:
Both customers and employees have defined different average relative importance weights for all 8 quality dimensions and all 32 service quality factors.
Statistically, there was a meaningful difference between the sets of the average relative importance weights were defined by the customers the employees.
Both customers and employees evaluated bank service quality higher than average.
Customers’ average scores were meaningfully higher than that of the employees.
The lessons we learned from this research were:
• Service quality measurement problems are naturally multi-dimension and complex problems. The problem is one of value trade-off that requires the subjective judgment of the DM.
• Mostly, customers’ preference structure is different from that of the employees
• Classical service quality measurement methods can not incorporate DM preferences, effectively. They are not interactive.
• Designing a new general approach for service quality measurement is a necessity in order to remove the classical models weak points.