An Alternative Approach in Service Quality: An e-Banking Case Study

Today's consumers are increasingly rigorous in choosing products in terms of their demands and preferences. To be competitive, businesses must design services that do not just satisfy customers, they must also delight them. The quality of a product or service is judged ultimately in terms of perceived customer satisfaction and delight. Previous service quality researchers have successfully used SERVQUAL and other scales to measure and improve service quality in a variety of industries. While these approaches have successfully conveyed the quality philosophies of America and Europe, other countries have approached quality differently. Japanese quality systems such as Kansei engineering (KE) and quality function deployment (QFD), for example, are increasingly popular and offer an alternative way to incorporate the customer's voice in the development and improvement of service quality systems. While traditionally used in manufacturing sectors, these approaches can also be applied successfully in service sectors. This study uses data from the National Bank of Spain (NBS) to demonstrate the KE and QFD procedures and show how the customer's voice can be designed into its e-banking system.