ABSTRACT

The study examined how customers service affect customer patronage in First Bank of Nigeria Plc, Abia State. The researcher adopted the causal research design. All customers of the selected banks formed the population of the study, thus, convenience sampling method was used. All analyses were done according to the stated objectives. The research objectives and demographic characteristics of the respondents were analysed with descriptive statistics. The hypotheses were tested with linear regression analysis Statistical package for the social sciences (SPSS) software version of 20.0 was used for computation of data obtained through administration of questionnaire. Findings showed that customer care exerts positive and significant effect on customer patronage of First Bank Nigeria Plc in Abia State. This indicates that the higher the customer care of First Bank Nigeria Plc in Abia State, the higher they achieved increased customer patronage.  Also, it was revealed that prompt service in first bank Nigeria Plc in Abia State exerts statistically significant influence on repeat business of First Bank Nigeria Plc in Abia State. This equally signifies that the higher the customers are satisfied with the timely service within the bank premises, the higher their patronage of first bank Nigeria Plc in Abia State. Employee commitment was equally found to be statistically significant and positively related to customer preference of First Bank Nigeria Plc in Abia State. This implies that an increase in employee commitment by first bank Nigeria Plc in Abia State will result in an increase in customer preference. It was recommended that First Bank Nigeria Plc, Abia State should always enquire from customers to know how they rate the level of satisfaction offered by the bank. This will help the bank identify the areas that require improvement to enhance service performance. It will also inform the bank on areas that have been given less attention, so that decisions can be made to upgrade those areas. Also, the use of commitment can be a strong marketing tool for First Bank Nigeria Plc in Abia State to boost their performance. The first Bank Nigeria Plc should check on the general behaviour of their employees and their knowledge level in answering questions of customers, in order to identify service failures and address them promptly