Quality Services at Housing Development Finance Corporation Limited

TQM evolved out of applications in manufacturing companies such as Toyota, IBM, and Motorola. In the 1990s, service companies began to realize that they could benefit from quality management. This is important as the service sector is the largest segment of the US economy, employing almost three times as many people as manufacturing industries. The service sector covers a very wide spectrum of differentiated organizations such as health­care, education, banking, insurance, hotels, transport, and so on, to name a few. It involves a very large number of people in a variety of work processes.

Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is taking initiatives for implementing TQM practices in banking sector for improving and upgrading the professional skills of the employees. RBI also suggests different public sector banks and commercial banks to adopt TQM practices and implement the same for their employees. TQM practices can be adopted in banks which would be a suc­cessful strategy to meet the new challenges. In the service industries like banking, most of the basic operation involves direct interaction of the employees with the customers. The growth of a bank is heavily dependent on customer satisfaction, and due to the availability of varied options, customers can shift to other banks or any other financial institution in no time.

The Housing Development Finance Corporation Limited (HDFC) was amongst the first to receive an ‘in principle’ approval from the RBI to set up a bank in the private sector, as part of RBI’s liberalization of the Indian Banking Industry in 1994. HDFC Bank began opera­tions in 1995 with a simple mission, that is, to be a ‘World-class Indian Bank’. HDFC Bank has a global presence and has been adjudged the winner in the Finance category and con­ferred the ‘Quality Excellence Award for Best Customer Service Result’ at The National Qual­ity Excellence Awards-2013 programme in Mumbai presented by the Stars of the Industry Group and World CSR Day.

“The goal as a company is to have customer service that is not just the best, but legendary,”

————————————————————————————————-  Sam Walton

Upon completion of this chapter, you will be able to:

1. Understand the similarities and differences between products and services
2. Explain the classification of services
3. Define service quality
4. Measure service quality
5. Discuss the various models used for improvements in service quality

Source: Poornima M. Charantimath (2017), Total Quality Management, Pearson; 3rd edition.