Introduction

Commercial banks form the largest and are the country’s most important group of financial
institutions. With stiffer competition among domestic and foreign banks, therefore it is important
for the commercial banks in Bangladesh to improve the quality of their services. Further,
increased in consumer preferences toward banking products choosing the banks that give them
the best service quality is a priority. As globalization and liberalization of financial institutions
accelerate, competition among banks in offering products and services becomes more intense.
Customers in Bangladesh is becoming more educated better informed, more internalized, and as
Bangladeshi economy becomes more and more knowledge based, the demand for high quality
services expands with increases in customers’ buying power.
Furthermore, the Bangladeshi capital and money market is not so large to operate by so many
banks operating here smoothly and profitably if they can not provide better service than the
competitors. So, it is now important to know the actual demand of the customers and cope up
with those promptly. In order for these banks to provide high quality products and services, they
need firstly to investigate the level of customers’ perceptions and expectations to their service
quality from their customers’ perspective. Through that information, they could then strategically
adjust their service quality to fit the local and global markets.

Objectives of the study

• To identify the problems faced by the customers of NCC bank foreign exchange branch
regarding the foreign exchange services.
• To identify the customers’ expectations regarding the foreign exchange service quality of
the commercial banks.
• To identify the customers’ perceptions regarding the foreign exchange service quality of
the NCC Bank.
• To identify the gaps between the customers’ expectations and the customers’ perceptions.
• To identify the ways out to minimize the customer gaps to provide a better foreign
exchange service to the customers.

Scope of the Study

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The study will cover the commercial banks which are Bangladeshi originated, registered and
operated under The Company Act 1991 and authorized dealer of Bangladesh Bank for foreign
exchange transactions. In this study I will try to make an understanding of the Service Quality
Gap and Customers’ Satisfactions of foreign exchange services of Commercial Banks in
Bangladesh on the basis of the NCC Bank’s customers’ opinion. This study tried to focus on
foreign exchange service industry in particular.

Methodology
Parsuraman et al (1985) identified ten categories that were labeled “Service Quality
Determinants” and were defined as reliability, responsiveness, competence, access, courtesy,
communication, credibility, security, understanding the customer and tangibles. Following
further research an amount of overlap between these categories was found. This led to a revised
SERVQUAL model in which the ten original categories were combined to cover five broad
dimensions of service quality as follows:
Original Model Refined Model Description
Tangibles Tangibles Physical representations or images of the
service to be provided
Reliability Reliability The ability to perform the promised service
dependably and accurately.
Responsiveness Responsiveness Willingness to help customers and provide
prompt service whilst capturing the notion
of flexibility and the ability to customize the
service to customer needs.
Competence, Assurance The competence and courtesy it extended to
Courtesy, customers and the security provided through
Credibility, operations.
Security
Access, Empathy Individualized attention to the customers.
Communication,
Understanding the Customer

The respondents are selected from the customers of National Credit and Commerce Bank,
Foreign Exchange Branch. A total of 100 questionnaires will be used to collect the data for

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analyze through face to face interview. The survey will conduct from November 20, 2009 to
December 15, 2009.

The questionnaire is designed for this study based on the widely accepted SERVQUAL model. A
total of 22 attributes is categorized under five dimensions as follows:
• Tangibility (4 attributes)
• Reliability (5 attributes)
• Responsiveness (4 attributes)
• Assurance (4 attributes)
• Empathy (5 attributes)

The questionnaire is divided into two sections. The first section is designed to measure the
respondents’ expectations (E) regarding service quality in the banking industry. The second
section is related to respondents’ perceptions (P) of service quality actually provided by the
commercial banking industry in Bangladesh.

A five-point Likert Scale ranging from strongly disagree = 1 to strongly agree = 5, will be used
to measure the 22 attributes under five dimensions mentioned above.

Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) package will be used to analyze the data set. A
frequency distribution will use to describe the sample. The mean and standard deviations of the
attributes will also be computed. Finally, paired t-tests will be used to test the significant
difference between sample means.

Limitation of the Study

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The study will de done solely based on the opinions of the existing customers of the foreign
exchange branch, Dhaka, who are mostly business clients. So, the opinion of the individual
customers’ may not expose through the study.
The time duration and sample size are another two limitations of the study. As the time is short, I
will not be able to survey so many clients. So, the sample size may reflect erroneous result in
compare to the population.

References

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