Factors afecting frontline employy performance in vietnam retail banking sector

Based on the model of multilevel investigation offactors influencing employee service performance and customer outcomes by Liao andChuang 2004, this study identified three factors that i

-NGUYEN HUU MINH PHUONG FACTORS AFFECTING FRONTLINE EMPLOYEE PERFORMANCE IN VIETNAM

RETAIL BANKING SECTOR

MASTER OF BUSINESS (Honours) SUPERVISOR: Dr Vo Thi Ngoc Thuy

Ho Chi Minh City – Year 2014

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ABSTRACT 4

CHAPTER1: INTRODUCTION 5

1.1 RESEARCH BACKGROUND 5

1.2 RESEARCH OBJECTIVES 7

1.3 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY AND RESEARCH SCOPE 7

1.4 STRUCTURED OF REASEARCH 8

CHAPTER2: LITERATURE REVIEW AND HYPOTHESES 10

2.1 FRONTLINE EMPLOYEE PERFORMANCE 10

2.2 PERSONALITY TRAITS 12

2.2.1 INTRINSIC MOTIVATION 14

2.2.2.TRAITS COMPETITIVENESS 15

2.2.3 SELF-EFFICACY 16

2.3HUMAN RESOURCE PRACTICES 17

2.3.1 EMPLOYEE INVOLVEMENT 17

2.3.2 SERVICE TRAINING 18

2.4 SERVICE CLIMATE 19

2.5 THE CONCEPT MODEL 21

CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 22

3.1 SAMPLE 22

3.2 MEASUREMENT SCALE 23

CHAPTER4: DATA ANALYSIS 30

4.1 DATA RESULTS 30

4.2 CRONBACH’S ALPHA COEFFICIENT OF REABILITY TEST 31

4.3 EXPLORATORY FACTOR ANALYSIS (EFA) 33

4.4 MULTIPLE REGRESSION ANALYSIS 36

4.5 DISCUSSION OF DATA RESULTS 38

CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSIONS, IMPLICATIONS, LIMITATIONS AND FURTHER RESEARCHES 42

5.1 CONCLUSIONS 42

5.2 IMPLICATIONS 42

5.3 LIMITATIONS AND FURTHER RESEARCHES 44

APPENDIX 50

LIST OF TABLES

Table 1: Cronbach’s Alpha

Table 2: Rotated Component Matrix

Table 3: KMO and Bartlett’s Test

Table 4: Model Summary

Table 5: ANOVA

Table 6: Coefficents

This study empirical examined quality of frontline employee performance to satisfycustomers in the Vietnam retail banking Based on the model of multilevel investigation offactors influencing employee service performance and customer outcomes by Liao andChuang (2004), this study identified three factors that influencing direct to front lineperformance as followed: personality characteristics, human resource practices and serviceclimate A quality method survey based on a sample of 200 people working in banks andusing banking service in HCM City to test the concept model was given The result of thisresearch shows the positive influence of service climate of banking environment and self-efficacy of frontline employees and the negative impact of employee involvement element totheir performance The finding of this study could suggest some practical implications formangers to improve their employees’ performance as well as competitive advantage inVietnam retail banking sector

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1.1 RESEARCH BACKGROUND

Development of retail banking segment is becoming a potential business and promises

to bring more profit for banks in the context of difficult domestic and foreign financialmarket In terms of slowdown credit growth in recent years, investment in developing amodel of modern retail banking aim to divert revenue from services instead of focusing onprofit from credit which is a traditional banking model When switched to retail fields, bankswill have bigger market and have an ability to reduce risks in business Vietnam market with

a population of nearly 90 million people and growing level of income is considered as apotential retail market of commercial banks In addition, SMEs (small and mediumenterprises) also tend to develop and expand the scale of business; hence this market willflourish in the future due to growth of income and all kinds of businesses Retail bankingcould be understood that is the provision of banking services to private individuals and SMEsthrough a network of bank or customers could access directly through means of technology,electronics, internet and telecommunications Services offered include saving and transactionaccounts, mortgages, personal loans, debit cards, credit cards and online banking

From 2008 to now, the foundation of retail banking model has been begun to appear.The first is card services and consumption loans (debit and credit cards) are more common tocustomers Until April 2012, the number of cards circulating is 44.6million cards (up to 12times compared to end of 2006) In addition, more 13,700 ATMs and 83,000 POS wereinstalled and almost 32,000 POS is connected (from IDG- International Data Group and BIU-Business Intelligence Unit).The next is the continued growth of online banking According tothe State Bank of Vietnam, while there were only 4 banks which were deploying online

banking services in 2004, this number was increasing to 25 banks in 2008 and continuallyrising to 40 banks in the quarter 3/2012 with the main service is to provide information, billpayments and transfer periodic cash in the system And finally, the associated financialproducts (banking services in conjunction with insurance, securities, gold) are being deployedmore and more An example of this type of products is the "bancassurance" (selling insurancethrough banks) that makes there venues for banks, develop customer market and create morediverse utilities to attract deposits, insurance premiums and payments via ATM cards.

The expansion of the banking market lead to competitions in retail banking isinevitable Banks are constantly improving the quality of service that not only effective butalso improve the business position and brand for the banks to pursue retail banking model,cultivate clients and build close relationships between bank and customers Banks tend tohave prestige clients in the service commitment to eliminate the risks on the path towardssustainable retail banking According to a survey of 18,000 retail customers in 35 countries

by Capgemini Group- an international information technology group, the rate of customerswho intend to change products and banking services in 2012 increased to 79% (up 12%compared to 2011) In Vietnam, 69% of customers would not sure to be faithful to currentbank The reason of this psychological is due to the quality of services, interest rates and fees.Since customer retention is a critical goal, the question that banks wonder becomes: whatfactors affect a customer’s perception of the bank and what actions can the bank take toincrease positive perceptions

Some previous studies proved that frontline employee performance significantly influencethe quality of service operations, since these employees present the face and the voice of theirorganizations to customers (Harline and Ferrell, 1996; Schneider, Wheeler and Cox, 1992).All customers need is relatedness, assurance, empathy and reliability from employees and

service quality (Brady and Cronin, 2001) Consequently, to improve service quality, bankneed frontline employees who have good performance to attract customers using their serviceand high knowledge and experience to consult appreciate services/products, introduce newservices and solve customer problems Therefore, frontline employee performanceenhancement is becoming a concerned subject of managers and economists.

1.3 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY AND RESEARCH SCOPE

This study based on literature and concerned researches and develop a questionnaire

by English Then author select questions that are suitable for needs and culture of Vietnameseand translate in to Vietnamese An in-depth interview was carried out with first ten people forreference and amendment The questionnaire would be tested in the pilot study with 50responses The aim of the pilot study is checking certain issues before undertaking large-scalestudy After that, the completed questionnaire was distributed through two ways: 1- face toface interview and 2- online survey on Google drive sent to social networks and bankingwebsites

The sample has been chosen to conduct in Ho Chi Minh City- a biggest and crowdedcity with a population of nearly 8 millions The total observations must be at least 200frontline employees and 200 customers

After gathering up full data, SPSS software was used to analyze multiple regressionslinear The initial steps of this method are testing Cronbach’s alpha (the reliability of themeasurement scale) and Exploratory Factor Analysis (the validity of the measurement scale)would be executed Finally, multiple regressions is analyzed after assumptions had beentested

1.4 STRUCTURE OF THE RESEARCH

This research includes five chapters:

Chapter 1: Introduction

The first chapter presents the background and purpose of the study through followingpart: Research Background, Research Objectives, Research Methodology and Scope

Chapter 2: Literature review and Hypotheses

In this chapter, the previous related researches are conducted to prove and supplementfor hypotheses The author provides literature and recognized result of last researches indifferent fields and over the world that connecting to frontline employee performance Theauthor also figures out evidences of positive impact of three main factors on frontlineemployee performance: personality characteristics, human resource practices andorganization climate On that basic, hypotheses and concept model are established and tested

in Vietnam retail banking

Chapter 3: Research Methodology

This next chapter describes the method that research applies and the processes thatauthor conduct the survey such as: identifying target populations, choosing samplingtechnique, data collection procedure and measurement scale for items The chapter divided in

to two parts: Sample and Measurement Scale

Chapter 4: Data Analysis

Chapter 4 reports the results of the survey Based on the survey data, the author testsitems, hypotheses and concept model, the chapter presents in detail the steps that analysedatabase such as: Cronbach’s Alpha Coefficient of Reliability Test, Exploratory FactorAnalysis and Multiple Regression Analysis

Chapter 5: Conclusions, Implications, Limitations and Further Research

The final chapter present the conclusions unify research results and discussion andelaborate on their significance to thesis Then the author gives some practical implication inreal working environment Limitations and Further research are also given to complete thesis

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW AND HYPOTHESES

In this chapter, the literature that concerned to frontline employees will be providedand hypotheses will be suggested:

2.1 FRONTLINE EMPLOYEE PERFORMANCE

No one can deny the important role of frontline employees who do the mostinteracting with customers and observes customers’ responses about bank’s products orservices then contribute significantly to the customers’ access to the services of the bank.Solomon, Suprenant, Czepiel, &Gutman (1985) emphasized that frontline service employeesplay a pivotal role in services encounters and have a connection with customers andorganization services and represent an organization to its customers, which often involvedyadic interactions between customers and service employees The employees’ performance

in relation to customer service activities can either create a sale for the bank or lose acustomer Most of banks spend more time and energy trying to find new customers than theyspend retaining the customers they have And every interaction between frontline employeesand their customers has a direct impact on the publics’ opinion of the bank due to theseemployees are the primary connection between the banks and customers Some customerswant to refer and find out information about the services of retail banking; the first thing theyhave to do is to meet the front line staffs for advices This is a decisive step when bankcustomers want to approach and persuade customers to use its services caused by the greatfirst impression through the performance of the customer service representatives Agreeingwith this point of view, Chase and Tansik (1983) argued that greater frontline employeeknowledge and skills are needed where customers and employees have high level ofcommunication because unpredictable situations creates a need for employees who can make

continuous and multiple non-programmed decisions during the service encounter In somecases, frontline employees may observe all service delivery process to contribute the testingand development of new service Hence, Schneider and Bowen (1984) argued that frontlineemployees are a valuable source of new service ideas and are even more useful in helping todetermine ways to implement a new service to get a favorable customer response.

The previous studies have been undertaken to explore factors affecting employeeperformance in high contact services that means typically involve activities in which neitherservice providers nor customers absent from the transaction and have a close and directinteraction for a prolonged period (Chase, 1981) Schlesinger and Heskett (1991) identifiedtwo critical elements that define a service strategy for high contact service organizations arehuman resources and service delivery systems More details, human resources elementinclude tangible characteristic (experience, education), training and intangibles (personalcharacteristics of workforce) Service delivery systems include processes and infrastructureused to deliver the service Besides that, Harline and Ferrell (1996) summarized thosepreceding researches and showed that attitude and behavior of employees can positively ornegatively affect customer’s perceptions to service encounter and their judgments to servicequality They believed that service providers who lack experience and tend to be in conflictwith others are likely are likely to exhibit decreased job satisfaction and performance whichleads to a decrease in customers’ perceived service quality On the contrary, contactemployees are better able to satisfy customers when employees have some controls over theservice encounter like: self-efficacy, job satisfaction, adaptability A recent study byGoldstein (2003) indicated three dimensions of service strategy in a high contact serviceenvironment which mirror those addressed by Schlesinger and Heskett (1991): Work systems(the work and job designs that organizations establish for their employees), Staff education,

training, and development (how these efforts are focused on accomplishing keyorganizational plans and addressing organizational needs) and Staff well-being (how theorganization maintains an environment and climate that support the well-being andmotivation of employees).

In addition, Liao and Chuang (2004) investigated the factors influencing employeeservice performance and customer outcomes and they gave a concept model about thisrelationship They emphasized the impact of managerial practices and service climate oncustomer perceptions of service quality and business-unit financial performance at the storelevel of analysis and linked employees’ personalities to their service performance They alsoindicated a multilevel framework in which employee service performance was examined as ajoint function of employee individual characteristics and service environment characteristics.Previous researches just focused on either organization- level or individual-level analysis.This is a first study that combined store-level (or macro) approach and individual-level (ormicro) approach to measure employee service performance However, the limitation of thisstudy is that the samples of survey were examined on a single occupation from the sameorganization in 25 restaurants in U.S Midwest For this reason, the study presented here based

on a research of Liao and Chuang (2004) and find out factors that effecting to front lineservice employees in retailing banking

2.2 PERSONALITY TRAITS

There are many previous researches demonstrated personality traits of individualsinfluencing their own working performance in different fields of work such as restaurants,hotels, banks and hospitals To improve this theory, Costa and McCrae (1994) had created a

model called Big Five model This model measures different traits of human lead to theirbehaviors without overlapping and is used as an observational tool based on five factors:agreeableness, conscientiousness, extroversion, neuroticism, and openness In addition to, asimilar idea of Liao and Chuang (2004) and Barrick and Mount (1993) is that four of thesefive factors (conscientiousness, neuroticism, extraversion and agreeableness) were associatedwith performance in all jobs and expected to be particularly relevant when performanceinvolved interactions with other people, as it does in a service context Except forneuroticism, three remaining characteristics have a positive effect to performance of

employee in high contact service Conscientiousness is defined as a good trait of a people oremployees in working environment who is dependability, responsibility, carefulness, andperseverance (Rhoades and Eisenberger, 2002) Barrick, Stewart, and Piotrowski (2002)

described individuals who have extroversion characteristic to be energetic, communal, bold,

confident, lively, and adventurous and tend to be friendly and open to the world

Agreeableness reflects the attitude an individual holds toward other people is willing to

getting along with others while neuroticism was described as a person who is not good at

adjusting their emotions and tend to hostility, anxiety, depression, and vulnerability (Edward(2003)

Another aspect to be considered by Yavas, Karatepe and Babakus (2009) is betterinsights to be shift the focus from basic personality traits of big five model to specific traitswhich are relevant for frontline service jobs in general These are intrinsic motivation, traitscompetitiveness and self- efficacy These three traits are measured by items that areassociated with frontline employees who usually work under stressful condition and requirekeeping a smiling face to interact with customers As a result, they found a susceptible link

between personality traits and job performance of front line employees working in differenthotels of Ankara, Turkey’s capital.

2.2.1 Intrinsic motivation

According to Ryan and Deci (2000), intrinsic motivation is conceptualized as anindividual’s activities for inherent satisfaction of the work itself rather than for someseparable consequences Simply speaking, when intrinsically motivated, a person is turned toact just for the fun or challenge entailed rather than because of external motivations, pressures

or rewards Agree with this concept, Oldham and Cummings (1996) assumed that intrinsicmotivation is the extent of employee in excited about work activities and that is motivated toengage in it for the sake of the activity itself and not everyone is intrinsically motivated forany particular task Clearly, intrinsic motivation is good for the improvement of workcreativity, work quality and job performance when people have internal desires to perform aparticular task that gives them more pleasure, develops a particular skill, or satisfies their self-esteem More specifically, due to intrinsic motivation, frontline employees in banking havemore creativity and strong desire to perform their best ability and expect to receive goodevaluations from their supervisors and customers They are likely to confront a difficulty orcurrent problem and learn how to solve it by themselves Therefore, intrinsic motivatedemployees are interested in explore new pathways and to take greater risks (Amabile,Goldfarb, and Brackfield, 1990) That is the reason why one of the most important concernsfor service enterprises is effective improvement the front-line employees’ intrinsicmotivation Since intrinsic motivation reflects the tendency to experience positive personalitytraits, we expect that:

Hypothesis 1a: There is a positive relationship between Intrinsic motivation and front line

service performance.

2.2.2 Traits competitiveness

Extant research has investigated to be positive related between traits competitivenessand job performance (Carsrud and Olm 1986; Brown and Peterson 1994; Brown,Cron andSlocum 1998) Very broadly, traits competitiveness is conceptualized as an internal andintentional desire of individual to engage in her/his activities and situations that involveinterpersonal competition (Kohn 1992) This definition is consistent with Spence andHelmreich’s (1983) concept about one of personality traits Spence and Helmreich notes thatperson in high competitiveness enjoy in interpersonal competition and have strong desire towin and be better than others Kohn (1992) also demonstrates that those who are highlycompetitive always keep monitor their performance to make sure that they are surpassingtheir peers They are committed by themselves and set a goal to outperform others, hence,take an extra effort in preparation and execution For highly competitive frontline employees

in banking industry, the inherent desire to be a professional staff and the importance theyattach to exceeding the performance of others motivate them to set higher target of revenueand faster promotion, exert a high effort level, and act meaningfully in the expectation thatthe chosen behaviors will lead to winning performance Then, we propose the following:

Hypothesis 1b: There is a positive relationship between Traits competitiveness and front line

service performance.

2.2.3 Self- efficacy

One of the most famous researchers that explores social cognitive theory and focusesmainly on the concept of self- efficacy is Albert Bandura In his opinion, self- efficacy is the

belief of a person in her/his capabilities to organize and to execute required action process toachieve given attainments (Bandura, 1977) Agree with this concept, Stajkovic and Luthans(1998) states that a high self-efficacy individual could mobilize the motivation, cognitiveresources and courses of action needed to successfully execute a specific task within a givencontext Moreover, Bandura (1977) also emphasized the different between the concept ”self-efficacy” and “self- confident” ( an overall or general feeling of competence) and “self-esteem” (an estimate of one’s value and degree of self- appreciation) Self- efficacy plays animportant role in changing and affecting an individual’s behavior Gist and Mitchell (1992)determines that self-efficacy is an important motivational construct It influences individualchoices, goals, emotional reactions, effort, coping and persistence Any individual who hasthe ability to show commitment to his career always is found to make an attempt to improvehis skills and motivate himself to perform well Self-efficacy also changes as a result oflearning experience and feedback In contrast, employees who doubt their capabilities willdrive them to shy away from difficult tasks They easily give up and slow to recover theirconfidence following failure When frontline employees don’t judge themselves able to dotheir job well, they may not try to do it, and not to put themselves willing in to the situationswhich they think they will fail People in poor sell-efficacy are afraid of new things andchallenges then they neither recommend new products, services and solutions to customers.Naturally, this leads to a passive manners and attitude of employees in working environment.Therefore, we propose that:

Hypothesis 1c: There is a positive relationship between Self- efficacy and front line service

performance.

2.3 HUMAN RESOURCE PRACTICES

Human resources management is the important variable for the sustainability andgrowth of any organization According to Storey (1995), Human Resource Practices involvestop management and line management in practicing the principles which improve staffs'capability and committed to endow with a competitive advantage In policies of humanresource management, employees are considered as valuable resource and all the employees

of the organization have the right to make their own decisions profitable on the long termbasis

As the Human resource practices are been given more importance and implemented, there isextent for direct involvement of employees through schemes of employee engagement Whenthe employees are accepted in the decisions making process in dealing routine matters it has asuccessful impact on the organizations If these actions and decisions are predisposed by theirindividual inner drives and enthusiasm it is assumed that employees are fully engaged and areworking in positive direction (Iaffaldano and Muchinsky, 1985) Followed by Liao andChuang (2004), the review of the literature on human resource practices indicated employeeinvolvement and employee training as the most relevant for employee performance in servicesettings

2.3.1 Employee Involvement

One of the determinants that Liao and Chuang (2004) mentioned in employeeinvolvement is participative decision-making option of employee in the organization’sdecisions There are many previous research examined this relationship and its consequences.Denison (1990) reported that organizations, in which employees could be participated indecision-making practices at higher levels, have showed more employee engagement and

their competition in company will be gradually increased Cascio et al (1997) promulgatedthat employee could involves in decision- making tendency voluntary engage withorganization Employees refer to contribute their ideas that they detected while servingcustomers and feedbacks from customers to improve products or services of company.Empathetic frontline employee involvement in development and implementation may helpprevent productivity and efficiency improvement goals of the firm from overwhelming theobjective of meeting customer needs in the new service Moreover, Schneider and Bowen(1984) contend that frontline employee involvement in new service development improvesthe technical quality of the new service, improves the service climate and employee morale inthe service establishment, and positively affects customer satisfaction Therefore, employeeinvolvement has a direct affect to employee performance:

Hypothesis 2a: There is a positive relationship between employee involvement and front line

service performance

2.3.2 Service Training

Swanson and Holton (2001) defined training is a systematic process of attempting todevelop employees’ knowledge, skills and abilities that are critical for successful jobperformance For employees engagement training has usually been established bymanagement to develop a particular range of brain thinking, developing skills, logicalreasoning and problem solving Training is essential for future position as well as presentposition of employees to acquire fast changing technologies, system based thinking and ontime logical decision making abilities Front-line service employees might receive initialtraining on how the organization expects them to serve customers, handle customers’complaints and learn about bank’s products and services More and more researches were

given to prove that employee training has a positive effect to employee performance andcustomer satisfaction Saks (1996) showed that the amount of training provided issignificantly related to job satisfaction, as well as to job performance, commitment, andability to cope Schneider and Bowen (1985) showed that formal training for new employees,general service training (Johnson, 1996) and gaining knowledge about an organization’senvironment and about service (Schneider et al., 1980) were helpful in achieving qualityservice and customer satisfaction Therefore,

Hypothesis 2b: There is a positive relationship between employee training and front line

service performance

2.4 SERVICE CLIMATE

Organization climate refers to a set of measurable properties of the work environmentthat affecting directly or indirectly to people who live and work in this environment Thatmay influence to their motivation and behavior in working (Litwin and Stringer, 1968) Ifcompany cannot bring a creativity and innovation in their working environment that meansthey fail to establish a motivated organization climate That will reduces effectiveness ofemployee performance and profit of company As Ismail (2003) said that successfulorganizations have the ability to provide a bonding between creativity and innovation withtheir climate and management processes Moreover, Martins and Terblanche (2003) foundthat leaders’ support, open communication, and providing facilities encourage employees tocome up with new ideas Have a same point, Enson, Pirrie and Band (2006) demonstratedthat work group supports, organizational encouragement, and lack of organizationalimpediments, freedom, and sufficient resources are positively correlated with creativityamong organizational members

However, service climate is a different definition in context of customer service.Service climate was defined by Schneider et al (1985) as employees’ shared perceptions ofthe policies, practices, and procedures that are rewarded, supported, and expected concerningcustomer services Working in motivated organization environment, employees understandwhich opportunities in their future promotion are likely to show their best performance tocustomers and ready to deal with any awkward situation Thus,

Hypothesis 3: There is a positive relationship between service climate and front line service

performance

2.5 THE CONCEPTUAL MODEL

A conceptual model is depicted in Fig.1:

CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

The third chapter report the methodology that author used to do the research

Simultaneously, this chapter also presents the measurement scales and their resources

3.1 SAMPLE

Two phrases comprised the research, a pilot and a main survey was undertaken inprivate banks of Ho Chi Minh (HCM) City, Vietnam such as: Asia Commercial Bank (ACB),Military Bank (MB), Techcombank, Sacombank

The objective of the study is investigating the factors that affect to frontlineemployees performance Hence, the author chooses bank’s employees are subject to survey,especially those who have directly contact with customers in daily The frontline employeesmay work at the positions such as teller, customer service relationship, credit officer Twogroup respondents are separate to survey: Group 1 includes people who working in banksenvironment as a customer service representative (frontline employees), group 2 includespeople who studying and working in HCM City and using retail banking services(customers) The questionnaire system also was divided into two streams: one for employees(questionnaire of personality, HR practices and service climate) and another for customers(questionnaire of employee performance) The reason of this division is gathering objectiveinformation from each subject survey and that obtained parameters can evaluate frontlineemployee’s performance objectively

Before going to collect pilot survey and main survey, the author have a deep interviewwith five frontline employees who have an experience in serving customers for over threeyears The aim of these interviews is investigate if they could understand all the scale andcollect more ideas from experienced employees, then select scales that adaptable with

Vietnamese thinking and cultures After that, the pilot testing of questionnaire with first 50samples will be investigated to prepare for adjustments and revisions before the main survey.The result shows that all respondents could understand the questions and pilot data could beanalyzed The main survey is undertaken by dispatch widespread through:

 Social networks: facebook, emails…

 Relationship: friends, friends of friends, colleagues, acquaintance…

 Banking website: ub.com.vn

The sample of this research must be at least: 40 questions *5= 200 observations That meansthe author need 200 responses from frontline employees and 200 responses from customersusing retail banking services in HCM City The purpose of this survey is to validate themeasures and to test the concept model

3.2 MEASUREMENT SCALES

Personality Yavas, Karatepe and Babakus (2009) measured three personality traits

which are developed by Low et al., 1999 (Intrinsic motivation), Brown et al., 1998 (Traitscompetitiveness) and Jones, 1986 (Self-efficacy) Each of personality traits is measured by 4items Employees were asked to access themselves with a five-point Likert scale, anchoringfrom 1- very inaccurate to 5- very accurate

Employee Involvement The 5-item scale of Haynes et al (1999) was used to

estimate the influence that employees have over decisions at work in health service Thisstudy applies Haynes’ scale to value the level of employee evolvement in their bank There is5- point Likert for employees to rate from 1-“not at all” to 5-“a great deal”

Service Training We borrowed DINESERV- a tool for measuring restaurant service

quality of Stevens, Knutson and Patton (1995) to measure in retail banking There are 13items scales to value service training for employees but only 10 items could be suitable forbanking sector Two remaining items are: keeping restroom thoroughly clean and provideservices as ordered Front line employees rated through three-point Likert scale: 1-not at all,and 3-to a great extent

Service Climate The quality of service climate is measured by 8 item global service

scale determined by Schneider et al (1998) with 5 point Likert scale: 1- poor, 5- excellent.This scale provides a summary measure of service employees’ perception of theirorganization’s climate for service

Frontline Employee Performance The scales developed by Borucki and Burke

(1999) are used for identifying front line employee performance 7 of 13 items aredetermined in accordance with banking sector and Vietnamese culture to be given forbanking customers Customers access performance of employee who served them by ratingthrough 11-point Likert scale from 1- completely dissatisfaction to 2- extremely good

This study tested all components in the conceptual model with an united 5 pointLikert scale, anchoring from 1- “strongly disagree” to 5- “ strongly agree” The table belowshows the full list of these components:

Intrinsic Low et al 1 When I do work well, it gives me amotivation (2001) feeling of accomplishment

2 I feel a great sense of personal satisfactionwhen I do my job well.

3 When I perform my job well, itcontributes to my personal growth anddevelopment

4 My job increases my feeling of selfesteem

competitiveness al (1998) 1 I enjoy working in situations involving

competition with others

2 It is important to me to perform betterthan others on a task

3 I feel that winning is important in bothwork and games

4 I try harder when I am in competition withother people

Self-efficacy Jones 1 My job is well within the scope of my

4 I have all the technical knowledge I need

to deal with my job, all I need now ispractical experience

5 I feel confident that my skills and abilitiesequal or exceed those of my colleagues

6 My past experiences andaccomplishments increase my confidencethat I will perform successfully in thisbank

7 I could have handled a more challengingjob than the one I am doing

8 Professionally speaking, my job exactlysatisfies my expectations of myself.(reverse coded)

Employee Haynes et 1 I could influence what goes on in theInvolvement al (1999) work area as a whole

2 Manager asks for my opinions beforemaking decisions affecting my work

3 I have the opportunity to contribute tomeetings on new work developments

4 I am allowed to participate in decisionsthat affect me

5 I can resolve customer complaints on my

Service Training Stevens, 1 Employees in this bank receive continued

Knutson training to provide good service

and 2 Employees in this bank receive extensivePatton customer service training before they(1995) come into contact with customers

3 Employees of this bank receive training

on how to serve customers better

4 Employees in this bank receive training

on how to deal with complainingcustomers

5 Employees of this bank receive training

on dealing with customer problems

Service Climate Schneider 1 Rate the job knowledge and skills of

et al employees in your bank to deliver(1998) superior quality work and service

2 Rate efforts to measure and track thequality of the work and service in yourbank

3 Rate the recognition and rewardsemployees receive for the delivery ofsuperior work and service

4 Rate the overall quality of serviceprovided by your bank.

5 Rate the leadership shown bymanagement in your bank in supportingthe service quality effort

6 Rate the effectiveness of your firms'communications efforts to employees andcustomers

7 Rate the tools, technology, and otherresources provided to employees tosupport the delivery of superior qualitywork and service

Employee Borucki 1 Being friendly and helpful to customers.Performance and Burke 2 Approaching customers quickly

Perceived (1999) 3 Asking good questions and listening to

find out what a customer wants

4 Being able to help customers whenneeded

5 Pointing out and relating item features to acustomer’s needs

6 Suggesting items customers might like butdid not think of

7 Explaining an item’s features and benefits

to overcome a customer’s objections.

In general, this chapter has fully introduced the methodology of research and process ofsurvey data Concurrently, the author also clearly mention about the source of measurementscale of items Collected data was analysed by the SPSS 21 along with the support ofMicrosoft Excel

CHAPTER 4: DATA ANALYSIS

This chapter reports the result of the study in detail Firstly, the author shows the statistical data collect after the survey The next step is checking the reliability of scales (Cronbbach’s Alpha Reliability Test) and the validity of the scales (Exploratory Factor Analysis) After checking all assumptions, the authors perform the last step is analyzing multiple regression

to indentify the relationship between the independent variables and dependent variable To sum up, the author states some ideas to discuss the result of data analysis

Customer Service Relationship 44 22

Year working at >=1 year and =<2 year 169 84.5

As the results, the majority of the respondents are employees who working in ACB bank(44%) Next are others which are commercial banks, except State Banks like Agribank,Vietcombank, Vietinbank and BIDV bank Teller position was priority survey because theyare large quantity in banks and contact with customers the most frequent They take 62.5percent while remaining positions just take 37.5 percent in total The subjects were surveyedmust work at current positive at least 1 year because we believe that with this period, thecould learn and know clearly about their banks and have enough experience to servecustomers Collected data is analyzed by SPSS software through following steps:

4.2 CRONBACH’S ALPHA COEFFICIENT OF RELIABILITY TEST.

For preliminary assessment of measurement, Cronbach’s alpha was used to test theinternal consistency which is described as whether all items of variance measured the sameconcept or construct and connected to the inter-relatedness of all items within measurementscale The acceptable value of Cronbach’s alpha is over 0.6 and Correlated Item-TotalCorrelation is higher than 0.3; that means the measurements scales have good reliability Incontrast, items will be deleted if Cronbach’s Alpha is less than 0.6 As detail figures in Table

1, it seems that the items in the test are correlated to each other, especially is items of Efficacy (0.809) Hence, there are no items deleted in the test of reliability

Self-Table 1: Cronbach’s Alpha

Correlated Cronbach's Factor/ Cronbach’s Alpha Items Item-Total Alpha if Item