Impact of Service Quality on Customer Loyalty- A Study on Telecom Sector in India

The objective of this paper is to identify the impact of service quality on customer relationship management and customer loyalty in the Indian telecom sector. Service quality has been considered as independent variable whereas customer relationship management and customer loyalty were considered as dependent variable. Five antecedents of service quality have been considered in this study viz. empathy, assurance, responsiveness, tangibility and reliability based on SRVQUAL model of Persuraman et al (1988). A survey-based exploratory and causal research design was used. A 29 items instrument was generated comprising of 18 items for the four antecedents of independent variables on the basis of the work of Persuraman et al (1988), 6 items for customer relationship management on the basis of the work of Sin, Tse and Yim (2005) and 5 items for customer loyalty on the basis of the work of Harsandaldeep Kaur and Harmeen Soch (2012). The data was collected from 262 customers using mobile service of various telecom operators of India through structured questionnaires distributed online. Exploratory factor analysis was conducted to check the validity and Cronbach’s coefficient alpha was used to determine the reliability of the instrument. Multiple regression analysis was used to determine the causal relationship between both the independent & dependent variables. Results depicted that the service quality has significant and positive impact on customer relationship management and customer loyalty. Out of the four antecedents of service quality, tangibility and assurance has significant and positive impact on customer relationship management, while tangibility has a significant impact on customer loyalty. The study suggests that the service providers should put their endeavor to upgrade the technology and serve the customers with modern equipments. Besides, the staff should try to please the customers by their neat appearance.