Efficiency evaluation of a private bank's branches with service quality approach by data envelopment analysis

Nowadays, service organisations play a vital role in economic development of the countries. Regarding the importance of financial activities, banking industry as a service industry, holds a great potential in business development. Banking industry is developing increasingly to move toward the path of privatisation and to provide a competitive environment. In this condition, the banks should address their customers' requirements in order to remain in the uncertain marketplace. Analysing service quality as an effective strategy in customer satisfaction improvement demands a specific attention. In the Parasuraman model which was proposed in the context of service quality, the gap between customers' expectations and perceptions has been introduced as a basis for service quality measurement. In this model which is called SERVQUAL, there are five main factors: tangibility, reliability, responsiveness, assurance and empathy which totally include 22 items. In order to gather information, real data and questionnaires have been used. Statistic populations of this study are seven branches of a private bank in Isfahan. In order to evaluate the efficiency of the bank's branches, service quality concept and data envelopment analysis has been exploited. Findings imply that three branches were addressed efficiently.