Research Proposal

Research Proposal

Proposed Area for Research

The area chosen for this research is Finance.

Proposed Topic for Research

This research will focus on customer service in retail banking and will analyse and compare the customer service of two banks, HSBC and Barclays.



Objectives of the Research

The objectives of this research will be as follows:

To compare the financial facilities of the HSBC and Barclays and study how they contribute to the customer service of the banks.

To compare the staff knowledge and service of HSBC and Barclays and its relation to the customer service of the banks.

To compare the different ways and methods of credit control and screening of HSBC and Barclays and how it impacts the customer service provided by the banks.

Scholarly Background

Customer service is very important for every organisation. It helps the companies in ensuring that they are able to retain the customers throughout and help them in creating customer loyalty. The importance of customer service is very high in every company, but it is very important in the banking sector, as well. It helps them in ensuring that the customers stay with them and keep their deposits with them so that the bank can grow. In order to stay ahead of the other banks, they have to make sure that the customer service is proper and helps them in maintaining good reputation in the market (Cronin and Taylor, 1992). The competition in the international market is so immense and intense that banks have to make sure that their customer service is above par and they are delivering the best customer service. The customer-bank relationships are long lasting; therefore, it is very important for the banks to make sure that they get customers for a long time so that they gain from the relationship.

There are different factors that help the banks in ensuring that they deliver the best customer service. The first aspect by which customer service can be measured is the financial facilities offered by the banks (Devlin, 2002). There are different banks that are use the financial facilities in different ways. Financial facilities means the loans, the overdraft facility, the amount of credit the bank can extend to its customers, etc. These facilities are very important for the customers. Once they develop proper and good relations with the banks, they expect the bank to help them whenever they need.

The availability of these services and facilities is another determinant of the customer service. The services that the customers are looking for should be available all the time. If at any time the service is unavailable at any time, the customers will not be satisfied with the bank and will think of changing the bank (Berry and Parasuraman, 1991). The bank will suffer a huge loss as it will lose an account. This is an important aspect. Old customers who have had a long relationship with the banks expect a lot from their banks; therefore, not meeting their expectations will be harmful for the bank as their level of customer service will ...