EVALUATION OF CUSTOMERS’ SATISFACTION WITH BANK SERVICES IN WEGAGEN BANK S.C.

Abstract

Customers are the livelihood of all organizations and businesses. The competitive power, strength, and survival of a bank rest in the degree of its customer satisfaction. Customer satisfaction is the situation when customer expectations have been fulfilled or exceeded to the fullest capacity over the life time of the service/product which leads to retention, loyalty, product purchase, and increased profitability. Factors that are implicated in literature that may affect customer satisfaction include: service quality; price and interest rates; employees’ knowledge and skills about services/ products; bank access and convenience (location, business hours, waiting time); bank image (appearance, reliability of equipment, physical environment and atmosphere); and complaint handling or service recovery. The objective of the study is to evaluate level of overall customer satisfaction and the factors contributing to satisfaction at Wegagen Bank. The design of the study is a quantitative cross-sectional type of research conducted in June and July 2013. The data collection tool used anonymous self-administered questionnaire and filled by customers of Wegagen bank. The tool has nine main parts mostly closed ended questions that measures satisfaction on a five point Likert scale, multiple choices, and open ended questions. Cross tabulations and binary logistic regression were done between the different factors with customer overall satisfaction. The overall level of satisfaction of customers for services/products was mean score 3.8 and the number of customers who were satisfied and very satisfied, 76.0%. It was found out that association between overall customer satisfaction and service factors (P value=0.00), economic related factors (P value=0.01), and employee/staff related factors (P value=0.00). However, my results have not shown the existence of association between overall customer satisfaction and the other factors (their P value greater than 0.05). Binary Logistic Regression analysis of service factors with overall satisfaction the adjusted OR=4.01 (CI 2.19, 7.35). On the other hand, employee related factors with overall satisfaction the adjusted OR=1.58 (CI 0.75, 3.35); and economic related factors with overall satisfaction the adjusted OR=0.92 (CI 0.52, 1.65). In conclusion the calculated mean score for overall satisfaction of customers of WB was 3.8 and the number of customers who were satisfied and very satisfied, 59.8% and 16.2%, respectively. Service factors have significant, positive, and are strong correlates with overall customer satisfaction. Although level of customer satisfaction may seem somehow encouraging and significant, there are rooms for improvements to work for Wegagen bank in enhancing its services. The bank has to strengthen or formulate innovative customers focused and satisfaction strategy, particularly on service quality, employees and economic factors such as prices, charges and interest rates and also avoid/minimize complaints by customers and if so happens recover quickly. It is also suggested that the bank to implement alternative channels; offer more innovate products/services; strive to retain/maintain long term relationship with its customers; and regularly take and implement feedbacks of customers and make them part of the strategy.