Abstract:
The effectiveness and efficiency became the buzz word of the success of banking operations and its proper functioning particularly with respect to providing service to the customers. The concepts of customer satisfaction and service quality are interrelated with each other. Moreover, satisfaction of customer depends upon service quality and it is increasingly offered as a strategy by marketers to position themselves more effectively in the market place. The higher service quality results in customers’ satisfaction and loyalty, greater willingness to recommend to someone else, reduction in complaints and improved customer retention rates. Hence, this comparative study is focused on customers’ satisfaction and service quality of state and private sector banks in Puttalam district. The study revolves around the service quality and its dimensions of Tangibility, Reliability, Responsiveness, Assurance and Empathy. A total of 250 respondents have been selected for the study using random sampling and is equally divided to state and private sector bank customers and data were collected through a standard questionnaire. The analysis complied with descriptive, correlation and regression while using SPSS. The study revealed that the service quality of state sector banks has an obligation to concentrate on responding the customer’s queries on the spot. In respect to service quality dimensions, the private sector banks need to concentrate on convenient working hours and competency of the staffs to answer the queries of bank customers. The study implies that state sector banks should also come forward and try their best to provide better quality service to win back their customers.
