A Study of Customer Expectation and Perception of Services offered by Banks in Rural Odisha

Abstract

The advancement of technology has significantly changed the customer expectations towards different services. In a highly competitive world, a bank needs to focus on satisfaction of customers with its products in order to reap maximum gain in the market. Major focus of the study is to identify the gaps that exist between customer expectations and perceptions with regard to the service quality and the areas that need to be improved to deliver superior quality of service in selected rural branches public sector banks in Odisha. The 30 items concerning 5 dimensions of the SERVQUAL instrument was used to measure the service quality of the banks. The parameters of service quality are Tangibility, Reliability, Responsiveness, Assurance, and Empathy. This study also investigates the rural bank customer’s expectations and their perceptions on the rural banks’ performance. Data was collected from two hundred samples from rural areas of Odisha State. It was found that there exists a gap between customer perceptions and expectations in rural Odisha, and emphasis should be given on three dimensions of service quality namely, Responsiveness, Assurance and Empathy to close the GAPS.

Keywords

• customer expectation
• customer perception
• banks
• servqual
• rural odisha