European Journal of Business and Management www.iiste.org ISSN 2222-1905 (Paper) ISSN 2222-2839 (Online) Vol 4, No.1, 2012 47 Application of SERVQUAL Model in Customer Service of Mobile Operators: A Study from the Context of Bangladesh Md. Rifayat Islam * Product Management Specialist, Grameenphone Ltd., GP HOUSE, Bashundhara, Baridhara, Dhaka-1229, Bangladesh. * E-mail of the corresponding author: rifayat@msn.com Abstract This study tried to explore the dimensions of service quality (SERVQUAL) on the perceived performance of the mobile phone users in the customer service of Bangladesh. Challenges are increasing rapidly in business environment. In last few years the mobile telecom market in Bangladesh has witnessed a substantial growth and rapid changes globally as well as domestically. One of the key challenges of this market is how they satisfy and retain their customers and also manage service quality, which holds a significant importance to customer satisfaction and their perceived performance. When this perceived performance fails to meet the expectation then a gap has been created between them. SERVQUAL model is a widely accepted approach to measure the difference between customer’s expectation and perception. Although there are five gaps in the service quality concept, this paper has attempted to concentrates on the most important one, reality gap analysis. The data were collected through a questionnaire survey in which a customer’s responded to a series of questions based on four key dimensions –tangibles, reliability, responsiveness and empathy. Four hypotheses were taken on the fact that there is a gap existing between expectation and perception in this dimension and all hypotheses are proved significant and they all are accepted after conducting Paired T test. Therefore it is better to conclude that the Customer Care Centers of Bangladesh are not performing up to the satisfaction of the customers and they need to take corrective steps to minimize these gaps as early as possible. The study concludes with some recommendations to improve the satisfaction of the customer. Keywords: SERVQUAL, Customer Service, Mobile, Gap, Service Quality. 1. Introduction Many service organizations have embraced relationship marketing with its focus on maximizing customer lifetime value. In order to gain more profit share and to be distinctive in the market place the service providers are taking different initiatives and customer care center is one of the common and important initiative. And in the Customer care center customer service has become an important component in this process. Hence, managers are keenly interested in the effect of service changes on customer experience and satisfaction. If customer’s experiences are not satisfactory, the relationship is likely to be very short. Customer service is shaping in different ways in order to provide a better service experience to the customer. Everybody has been offering gratuitous and blindly obvious advice on how to improve the customer experience for years. As the environment of Businesses is getting stiff day by day, companies are paying more concentration on the customers. And to be more responsive to the customers, companies have come out with the idea called “Customer Service” which has become the strength for some of the companies. By the term Customer Care Center, it means the point of contact for the customers of a particular company. Generally in Customer Care connects customers with the right individual who responds to the various problems that the customer is facing and also provide various information and help along with possible solution to the problems. Moreover successful companies pay more concentration on the Customer Care Center for the purpose of providing a better service experience to its consumer. 2. Literature Review