Importance of quality management in Islamic banking
KUWAIT: It is impossible to understand the important role that quality management plays in the banking industry across the world, especially in Kuwait. Quality is a priority to nearly every Islamic bank. Assurance of high-quality standards helps ensure the requirements of customers, both internal and external.
It must be noted that the personnel play a significant role in the banking industry when it comes to efforts to enhance the quality of service delivery. This explains why Islamic banks manage service quality through effective management of employees, such as through continuous improvement of their capabilities, knowledge, and skills.
Training fosters a culture of high-quality standards by equipping employees with up-to-date knowledge and skills related to banking services that they can serve the consumers better resulting in improved consumer satisfaction. Besides training employees to achieve high-quality standards, Islamic banks integrate tools and techniques necessary to foster quality management and quality assurance, such as ISO 9000 and quality management tools like cause and effect diagrams, fishbone or Ishikawa diagram, and checklists.
Values related to the quality of service provision in the banking industry include honesty-truth, integrity, and transparency. Honesty inspires a culture of integrity and transparency, which is consider indispensable to achieving transparency objectives. Other values that help promote the quality of service delivery in the banking industry include teamwork, respect, professionalism, and commitment.
Employees in the banking industry work on most projects as teams and are expected to respect differences and embrace professionalism and dedication to guarantee the delivery of high-quality service. A combination of these values and appropriate service and product delivery models play a significant role in fostering the delivery of quality service. —Ahmad Al-Hajri is a student of School of Business, the Australian College of Kuwait