Service quality has emerged as one of the most important variables shaping customer perceptions in the banking sector. Within this sector, the private banking division caters to affluent clients who tend to have higher expectations, making the delivery of high-quality service essential for competitiveness and customer retention. Although service quality has been widely studied, limited research has applied sentiment analysis to online customer reviews using the SERVQUAL framework. Existing research has used traditional surveys and questionnaires, with limited attention paid to the private banking sector. This study addressed this gap by using sentiment analysis and the SERVQUAL framework to assess service quality in the South African private banking sector as reflected on HelloPeter.
The study is underpinned by a positivist paradigm and employed a deductive reasoning approach to understand customer attitudes across the SERVQUAL dimensions. A quantitative design was used to quantify customer reviews through a lexicon-based sentiment analysis method. The findings revealed that service quality dimensions do not contribute equally to customer satisfaction. Reliability consistently recorded the lowest polarity scores, suggesting that most of the South African private banking customers on HelloPeter are dissatisfied with banks' failure to meet their promises. In contrast, assurance, despite having the lowest volume of reviews, yielded the highest polarity scores, indicating that trust-related experiences contribute the most to customer satisfaction when acknowledged. The empirical distribution of the polarity scores and the star ratings revealed that customers are likely to express extreme service experiences, whether positive or negative.
The study contributes methodologically to service quality literature by demonstrating that sentiment analysis can be used alongside the SERVQUAL framework to evaluate online customer reviews. Theoretically, the findings revealed that assurance holds higher weight in a trust-based services context, challenging the view that all SERVQUAL dimensions contribute equally to overall service quality. The study also highlighted that South African private banks should prioritise improving reliability and maintaining assurance to strengthen trust and client relationships. Future research could assess customer perceptions from other customer review platforms and track customer sentiment over time to understand changing customer expectations.
- Assessing private banking service quality in South Africa through sentiment analysis
- Tshegofatjo George Makhafola
- Nicole Cunningham
- University of Johannesburg; Master of Applied Data Science
- Master of Applied Data Science, University of Johannesburg
- 9964201707691
- University of Johannesburg
- University of Johannesburg
- English
- Thesis