Operações de serviços, qualidade percebida e lealdade : um estudo no setor bancário

Abstract

The environment of services operations poses challenges to organizations and their managers, mainly because they involve the customer in the acts of consumer service. The effects of technology and globalization, makes the situation even more challenging. Added to this, the importance of providing services that meet what the market wants, in order to retain customers in an increasingly demanding market. Studies evidences point to a strategy of loyalty as a way to form a sustainable customer base, providing increased profits over time. In this context, this study was conducted in order to verify the interference of the perceived quality of services, the front and back office, at the loyalty of corporate customers in a Bank. The study consists of two phases, an exploratory qualitative and other quantitative descriptive. The qualitative stage, through semi-structured and in-depth interviews aimed to collect perceptions of managers and customers of the Bank who was the environment of the research. That would provide subsidies for the improvement of the collection instrument applied to the quantitative stage. Through a survey, a questionnaire was administered to 48 questions whose range of quality services SERVPERF and the scale of loyalty to Santos (2001) had added 20 questions derived from interviews of qualitative stage. As a result, qualitative stage contributes a proposal to scale adapted to the current context of the banking industry corporate customers. In the quantitative stage, the empathy factor, security and response formed a model that represents 62% of explanatory power of the loyalty behavior of 129 customers that composed the sample. ANOVA – Analysis of Variances was performed to compare the means of assessing the quality and loyalty among different customer groups. The results show that the respective means of evaluation are higher for customers with a higher level of relationship with the Bank, with higher significance levels for customers that operate with credit and customers who said that the Bank is a leading financial institution in volume Business. Lastly, the paper highlighted some theoretical and managerial implications of the work, as well as limitations of the research and suggestions for future studies.