Perceived service quality in Ethiopian retail banks

Abstract

Abstract This study uses the SERVQUAL method to assess perceived service quality in selected Ethiopian banks based on customer surveys conducted in three private and the largest public bank in Addis Ababa. For all banks, service expectations were not matched by perceived performance. While there were only a few differences in service expectations between public and private banks, private banks were perceived to be relatively better in delivering service. The findings also indicate that perceived service quality falls short of customer expectations in all the five dimensions of service quality—tangibles, reliability, responsiveness, assurance and empathy—with the largest perception‐expectation gap observed for the empathy dimension. As the banking sector becomes increasingly more competitive in Ethiopia, these findings can provide valuable insight to bank managers regarding the specific customer service issues that they need to address in their ongoing effort to attract and retain more customers. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.