Abstract:

Bank performance depends directly on the bank’s ability to capture and retain clients and on customer-employee relationships.  Thus, it is crucially important for banks to know their customers’ needs and expectations. The goal of the research is to determine factors affecting bank value perceived by customers and to examine the gaps in customers’ and employees’ perceptions of these factors. In turn, value perceived by clients is determined by the level of bank service quality. The goal of the paper is to prepare a theoretical basis for the survey and to describe and validate theoretically the design of the research instrument.  To achieve the goal the brief literature review was conducted in the fields of relationship value management, service quality and customer buying behavior. In the result of the current research two questionnaires were developed: (1) for bank customers, and (2) for bank employees. The statements of the questionnaire were developed based on concept of a customer perceived value and different variations of the SERVQUAL model.  Using our developed instrument it will be possible to measure the level of service quality in Latvian banks and to examine the difference between customers’ and employees’ viewpoints on the quality of bank services.