Employee Service Quality and Customer Satisfaction: Applying SERVQUAL in Chinese Banking Context

Service quality has been long proved for its contribution to customers appealing and retention in the business world. It is the purpose of this article to uncover the connection between employee service and customer satisfaction in bank service quality. The generic SERVQUAL model was modified to conceptualize employee service quality as well as to predict its effect on customer satisfaction in the banking context through four dimensions. A survey was conducted among 230 customers from a commercial bank in China to testify such a conceptualization. A Smart-PLS analysis was applied to validate the scales in the survey as well as the hypotheses derived from the conceptualization. Results confirm that employee reliability, assurance, and responsiveness lead to a satisfactory perception and evaluation of bank service among the customers to the exclusion of employee empathy out of a modified SERVQUAL model. This research outcome offers guidelines in training as well as managing employees in banks aiming at service quality improvement. The modified SERVQUAL also contributes to a theorization in the service quality causality to customer satisfaction within the domain of the banking industry.