Introduction
Banks are the mart of the world, the nerve center of Economics and Barometers of Nations property. Service Sector has been made an instrument of social change in India. Banks essentially are social organizations, rendering financial services to sub serve the socio-economic objectives of the society. In order to serve effectively the nation’s social objectives, banks have to remain healthy and profitable. Geographical expansion was one of the remarkable achievements of the Indian Banking System after Nationalizations. Banking in India is indeed as old as Himalayas. But, the banking functions became an effective force only after the first decade of 20th century. The East India Company laid foundation for modern banking in the first half of the 19th century with the establishment of Bank of Bengal in 1809, Bank of Bombay in 1840 and Bank of Madras in 1843.1, 2 Today India is having around 600 banks with 4800 branches spread all over the country and these were all nationalized in a three-phased manner. The practice of banking has undergone significant transformations in the nineties. While banks are striving to strengthen Customer Relationship and started moving towards relationship banking, the need for competition of higher productivity and efficiency of the banking system is now increasingly realized. The economic reform process has set in motion a stage when new private banks are allowed to set up. Studies conducted from time to time in different parts of India have indicated that bank customers are interested primarily in promptness, accuracy, completeness and speed in delivering service by the banks.3
As per RBI guidelines since January 1993, new banks in private sector have started operating in India. Transition of Banks from Class banking to Mass Banking and thrust upon profitability in recent period has led them towards customer orientation.4, 2, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 Now, it is the duty of every banker to accept their customer’s as “King” to serve in the present era of cut-throat competition. With the advancement of science and technology, world has reduced to a global village. Thus, change is inevitable and desirable. In such a situation, customer orientation has become the key word for competitive success. The need for introducing efficient customer service in the banking industry is now keenly felt by all concerned.
Objectives
The need of this study is to bring out by what extent the selected bank branches cater the needs of customers of Ooty in Nilgris District, viz., State Bank of India, Indian Bank and the Canara Bank. This study is coined with twin objectives, (i) to understand how far the physical facilities are feasible and (ii) to elicit the opinion of the customers on their satisfaction of the selected branches.
Review of Literature
Sobhana. V. K (1998) studied that customers were dissatisfied with the existing communication devices and lack of effective suggestions. Benjamin Christopher and Maruthupandian (1976) analyzed the assessment of level of customer satisfaction in selected public sector banks by constructing satisfaction index. Dorairaju. S (1994) examined the Cumbersome and Procedural formalities in availing services. Dilshat. A (1994), Sanjay Shankar Kaptan (1997) and Subramanya M, Sharma, P. and Amaraveni, (2005) observed that the bank services need considerable improvement on an emerging basis. Anju Singla and Arora RS (2005), Karunakaran N (2020), Bayavanda Chinnappa T and Karunakaran N (2021) and Chinnappa T B and Karunakaran N (2022) observed that rapid growth of banking industry which is essentially a service industry, has tendered to lower the efficiency standards which being the worst affected area the customer service.
Historical Background
The first attempt to consider the issue of Customer Services by nationalized banks was made by the Banking Commission under the Chairmanship of R. G. Saraiya in 1972. Then a committee was appointed under the chairmanship of R .K. Talwar in 1975 to study the issue of Customer Services in particular. Indian Bankers Association conducted a nationwide survey in 1984. In 1990, the then Finance Minister Prof. Madhu Dandawate, while presenting the Annual Budget, observed that level of customer satisfaction in Banks is not high as it should be and asked RBI to go for one more committee to seek out various aspects of the services expected by the customers. Goipoira was appointed as Chairman for bringing out the problems of the Customer Services in 1990.
Customer Profile and Expectation
Banks cannot exist without customers.4 Customer can be defined as a user or a potential user of bank service, as service is just a day-in day-out activity or ongoing, never ending, unremitting, persevering compassionate type of activity. Customers are of two categories, the existing customer or present customer and new customer including potential customer. Today the cost of retaining a customer is just one-tenth the cost of acquiring a new one. Customer coming to the banks now are quite different, compared to the one in the past expect quality of service, respect, courtesy and elegance. The customer knows more about banking, he knows about his alternatives, he is more demanding, he is aware of his bargaining capacity. Loyalty to a particular bank is a thing of past. Expectations of different types of customers are varied and are ever increasing. The customer is more conscious of quality service. Customers have their own time pressures and business commitments; they are expecting speed, convenience at low cost (Table 1). Some of the customers know that they can get better service from private and foreign banks. The borrowers expect expeditious decisions, prompt attention, and appropriate information, reduction in cumbersome paperwork, reasonable charges and transparency in relationship. Banks offer tangible services but which cannot satisfy the customers, who need intangible services, which could be experienced like behavior and efficiency of staff, speed of transactions and the ambience. When the customer experience the widening gap between the expectations and experience, the result is raising customer complaints about the banks.2
Table 1
Customer’s expectation from banks.
Methodology
Judgment sampling is used for selecting 150 respondents from the universe consisting of 2 lakh as its population. The collected data was coded by giving individual codes to each answer and was tabulated according to the specific objectives of the study. Sex, age, education, occupation, and marital status, monthly income, type of family and family size were considered as independent variables. The dependent variables are customers, bank, type of account, type of loan, and level of satisfaction. Quartile deviation has been used to find the customers level of satisfaction with their banks. For this purpose the factors considered for the level of satisfaction has been given scores 3, 2, and 1. i.e, highly satisfied with 3 as its score, satisfied with score 2 and score 1 for those not satisfied. The total score given by the respondents to their banks is put for quartile deviation and the scores secured are shown in Table 2. To understand how far the physical facility is feasible, and to elicit the opinion of the customers on their satisfaction of the selected branches, SBI, Canara Bank and Indian Bank branches were selected.
Table 2
Total score given by the respondents to their banks.
|
Name of Bank |
Low Level |
Moderate Level |
High Level |
|
State Bank of India |
51-99 |
51-92 |
51-97 |
|
Canara Bank |
51-92 |
93-102 |
103-153 |
|
Indian Bank |
109-153 |
103-153 |
108-153 |
Table 3
Customers level of satisfaction with banks.
|
Level |
SBI Bank |
Canara Bank |
Indian Bank |
|||
|
Number |
% |
Number |
% |
Number |
% |
|
|
Low Level |
15 |
30 |
15 |
28.3 |
13 |
27.7 |
|
Moderate Level |
24 |
48 |
25 |
47.2 |
21 |
44.7 |
|
High Level |
11 |
22 |
13 |
24.5 |
13 |
27.7 |
|
Total |
50 |
100 |
53 |
100 |
47 |
100 |
Table 4
Chi-square test results.
Results and Discussion
Personal profile
Out of the total customers male constitutes 62% and female with 38%. When age-wise composition made 18.7% are less than 25years, 44.7% are between 26 to 30years and 36.7% are above 31years of age. Qualification-wise 44% are Graduates, 20.7% belong to Technical graduates, Professional’s constitute 20.7% and the balance 14.7% are having only school level of education.
Main findings
hows that the customers level of satisfaction for the banks madetangible and intangible services. Since, SBI and Canara Bank have more number of customers when compared with Indian Bank who have moderate level of satisfaction. Whereas, Indian Bank succeeded with customer satisfaction with the facilities and the services provided.
In order to study the factors influencing the level of customer satisfaction, Chi-Square Test is applied between the personal variables and the independent variables. From the analysis it is found that occupation and monthly income alone has influence the type of account the customers have (Table 4).
Further analysis made between the personal factors and the level of customer satisfaction to the independent variable for all the three banks and the results are shown in Table 5. From the Table 5 it is clear that the variables do not have any statistical relationship.
Conclusion
Almost all managers have agreed that the future belongs to the customers. The focus of banking business tomorrow will have to be customer centered. The role of Human Resources is found significant since customers are found more sensitive to the impolite behavior of bankers. Many a times disputes arise between customers and banks on various matters such as wrong debit to accounts, excess recovery of interests charges, wrongful dishonor of cheques, inadequacy in services and so on. In order to set right these types of complaints the RBI introduced the Banking Ombudsman Scheme. The study has made clear that the nationalized banks are attempting its best to attract higher rate of customer’s satisfaction however with sincerity to satisfy all the customers at all times.
