Perceptual Mapping of HDFC

This mapping was done by HDFC bank, where it wanted to see the banks performance with respect to its major competitors. The two factors taken into consideration was customer service and range of plans The result shows that the performance of HDFC is average in both the segments, in providing different plans to the customers, its ahead of many competitors but still a few competitors are ahead of HDFC. SBI is ahead of all it competitors, as present scenario the services offered by SBI are unmatched. It is followed by METLIFE, ICICI, and MAX Newyork. In future HDFC has to increase its services in order to attract more customers. Now the second part of the measurement was on customer service and its the matter of concern for HDFC. Though many banks operating in India, are not able to meet customers expectation. Here again the satisfaction level of customer is high for SBI followed by MET LIFE. The core of a service industry is the customer service and HDFCs performance is below average then what customer does expect. Now the causes of customer dissatisfaction are explained by the Gaps Model.

The Gaps concept and the Service Quality in HDFC bank

Gap 1: The customers expect a better service from the bank. But the survey we did that on customer service HDFC is lacking behind its competitors. Competitors like ICICI, Max Newyork and SBI are ahead of it and its also reflected by the number of customers that SBI have. The customer feels that the reply to the customer compliant by the bank is not prompt. And also there is long waiting time as the service delivery is not prompt. Gap 2: The customer wants a good service at less cost which the bank is unable to understand. Gap 3: The customer wants the banks should be in their reach, but the branches of HDFC is not strategically located and hence here the company is unable to understand the customers voice and its due to poor servicescape. A few customers in our survey the charges for the facilities provided by the bank are higher than the nationalized banks. Gap 4: The employees in the HDFC bank are very much comfortable with the technology but their banking knowledge and other customer queries is poor. And the reason for this behavior was that the front line employee in the bank switches job very fast. Gap 5: Now the major gap is this, as first of all the customers have more faith on nationalized banks and secondly what is promoted by the HDFC bank and what actually perceived by customers are different, in case of responsiveness the bank in its promotion shows that the employee are very responsive but reality is different

Sources Journal of Economics and Behavioral Studies Vol. 2, No. 1 pp. 32-40, Jan 2011

Rai Alok Kumar, 2009: Banks (Finance) (Quality management) Liquefied petroleum gas (Quality management) Direct marketing