| dc.description.abstract | Across all service industries, service quality remains a critical issue in maintaining and
propagating business in the competitive market place. To survive in a highly competitive service
environment, it is apparent that service industries need to provide customers with high quality
services. The importance of services and managing them should therefore not be underestimated.
Companies are forced to be part of the service competition and therefore need a completely new
perspective to view business. Too often, they focus on their external customers from where the
direct profit comes from. This perspective needs to be deflected also to include the internal
customers since all customers are valuable. The objectives of this study were to determine the
factors affecting internal service quality and establish the relationship between internal service
quality and operations performance among commercial banks in Kenya. The research was
conducted through a descriptive survey design and a total of 66 respondents randomly selected
from 3 large commercial banks, 7 medium commercial banks and 12 small commercial banks.
Questionnaires were used to collect primary data. The collected data was analyzed by use of the
Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS). The data analysis techniques included descriptive
statistics like the mean, percentages and standard deviation. Inferential statistics like regression
analysis were also used to establish relationships between the dependent and independent
variables. The findings were presented in tables, pie charts and bar graphs. Major research
findings indicated that the commercial banks carried out internal service quality management
through a dedicated service quality management department and that the commercial banks used
five main measures of service quality namely reliability, assurance, tangibles, empathy and
responsiveness. The main conclusion was that different measures of service quality had different
contributions to operational performance of commercial banks with the highest contributor being
measures of reliability followed by measures of tangibles, measures of responsiveness, measures
of assurance and measures of empathy respectively. The main recommendation was that policy
makers should create policies and procedures that promote the inclusion of all measures of
service quality in the pursuit of desired levels of operational performance among commercial
banks. The researcher suggests that further research be carried out with an aim of creating a
model to provide clear guidelines on the appropriate mix of internal measures of service quality
that should be adopted by organizations in their quest to attain appropriate levels of operational
performance. | en_US |
