Service quality in Internet banking: the importance of customer role

One of the key challenges of the Internet as a service delivery channel is how service firms can manage service quality as these remote formats bring significant change in customer interaction and behaviour. Drawing on theoretical frameworks of service quality and adapting these to particularly reflect the remote delivery format of the Internet, this study proposes and tests a service quality model of Internet banking. The research uses participant observation and narrative analysis of a UK Internet banking Web site community to explore how Internet banking customers perceive and interpret the elements of the model. Findings show that the level and nature of customer participation had the greatest impact on the quality of the service experience and issues such as customers’ zone of tolerance, the degree of role understanding by customers and emotional response potentially determined, expected and perceived service quality.