The moderating role of transformational leadership on customer service quality in banks: A case of commercial banks in Zimbabwe

Abstract

This study focused on the moderating role of transformational leadership on customer service quality in banks. 13 commercial banks were included in the study. Customer service quality is a topical issue as it is a source of competitive advantage in banks. This study focused on the moderating role of transformational leadership as it pertains to internet banking, social media banking, mobile banking, and peer to peer lending on customer service quality. The study also focused on the relationship between customer service quality and customer satisfaction. Positivism paradigm was adopted, and researcher used facts and evidence to answer research questions. A deductive approach was employed to necessitate quantification of relationships and hypotheses testing in the study. Structured questionnaires were used and a large sample of 410 respondents was used to represent the study population and various inferential statistical tests were conducted. The results showed that transformational leadership had a positive moderating role on customer service quality. This is an indicator that banks should invest in developing transformational leadership. The results also showed that there is a positive, weak but statistically significant relationship between internet banking and customer service quality. Results for social media banking and mobile banking were not statistically significant. This is an indicator that banks need to do more in terms of customer awareness of their products. Peer to peer lending, though statistically significant, had a negative relationship with customer service quality. This is an indicator that customers do not have full understanding of this product. The results also showed that there is a positive relationship between customer service quality and customer satisfaction. Banks should invest resources and technology to ensure high customer service quality as this leads to customer satisfaction.