CUSTOMER SATISFACTION WITH SERVICE QUALITY (THE CASE OF COMMERCIAL BANK OF ETHIOPIA ADDIS ABABA BRANCH)

Abstract

To examine and measure service quality with customer satisfaction at Commercial Bank of Ethiopia was the aim of this study. The assessment of service quality and customer satisfaction was made in view of SERVQUAL model by examining five service dimensions namely: tangibles, reliability, responsiveness, assurance and empathy (Parassurman et al.1988) and one additional dimension called convenience. Data gathered by a survey questionnaire from 100 customers at Addis Ababa Branch was analyzed using descriptive analysis & correlation by the help of SPSS v. 20.0. A gap score analysis was used to highlight the gap between the actual service quality and the customer satisfaction toward it. Accordingly, the overall analyses of service quality and customer satisfaction based on the above variables indicated that there is a big gap between perceived and actual services delivered at CBE. SERVQUAL gap score on tangible dimension showed that the bank’s materials and statements in particular are less appealing to attract customers while the bank is found out to be in a better position other tangible dimensions such as equipment, facilities and reception. Results also revealed that the bank is not as reliable as expected by customers. Failure to provide service to its customers on a promised time frame stood out to be a serious concern as it may erode customers’ confidence. The Bank’s attempt to answer customer queries at a certain period of time and its sincere interest to solve customers’ problems would increase the reliability of the bank. Employees at CBE are discovered to be less responsive to customer service, unable to provide prompt service and unwilling to help customers when the need arises. Lack of knowledge and skills to answer and handle customers’ questions skills were results of the study associated with the dimension of assurance. Besides, the result indicated that customers feel unsafe in their transactions in the bank. The empathy dimension of service quality indicated that customers do not consider CBE working to their best interest at heart. Location of ATM machines and information signage services were deemed inconvenient to customers as they disregarded special needs. To summarize, the larger mean gaps in service quality were observed in convenience, empathy, assurance and responsiveness respectively and the least gap score being reliability. The overall result in this survey clearly showed that the services given by CBE were far below its customers’ expectations.