The key to developing a long-lasting competitive advantage in the financial
services sector is like in many other service industries, the delivery of service quality.
The actions and behaviour of service personnel directly influence the perceptions
of customers regarding the service offering. Due to the intangibility and complexity
of financial services, the role of the employee becomes an integral part of the
service delivered. Howcroft (1992) claims that all UK retail banks consider the
provision of a high quality customer service to be a priority and a way of gaining
competitive advantage. Berry (1981) also suggests that banks should take advantage
of the opportunity to achieve differentiation through the quality of their workforce.
Investing in the workforce with the intention of using it as a marketing (Weinstein
1980; Tarver 1987) and differentiation strategy (Metzger and Dey 1986; Gwin
and Lindgren 1986; Parasuraman et al. 1988) has been in fact widely noted in the
literature.