Customer Satisfaction a Comparison Between Islamic and Conventional Banks Case Study of Qatari Banks

This thesis studies Customer satisfaction in Islamic banks in Qatar in comparison with their conventional counterpart. It attempt to investigate whether Islamic banks have overcome the obstacle of being relatively new compared to conventional banks, whether they started providing satisfying services to their customers or whether they act as taking advantage of their customers’ needs for Islamic finance products and treat them as captive clients who resort to Islamic banks for religious reasons ad actually don’t give much attention to the level of services provided. Questions like this needs to be answered to identify where do Qatari Islamic banks stand and how do their customers view their services. Also, what kind of improvements they need to reach a higher level of customer satisfaction. A comprehensive comparison questionnaire was formulated, responses from the questionnaire and other data collected from banks’ websites, personal interviews, lists of service charges, etc., analyzed and reviewed. The study conducted sub-sectoral comparisons of Islamic and conventional banking as well as individual comparisons between banks. The results show that customers of conventional banks indicated higher level of satisfaction than the level shown by customers of Islamic banks. The best performing bank according to the index in conventional banks and in general is the commercial bank followed by Doha bank, while the best performing bank in Islamic banks category is QIB. The lowest performing of all 8 banks is AL Ahli bank followed by QIIB. QIIB is also the lowest performing bank among the four Islamic banks with a significant difference from the best performing bank.