Success Factors of Islamic Banks: An Empirical Studybased on keeping and maintaining a continuous relation with them which is,
to some experts, the most important managerial rule^5 : Success in banking
services means the ability to interact with and relate to the client’s desires,
anticipate their wishes, and to offer such services that are specific to these
desires and wishes.^6
There may be several parameters by which the quality of banking services
offered to a customer could be measured. These might include monitoring of
customers’ satisfaction, which may be done through administration and
analysis of periodic questionnaires. Another way is to conduct a time and
motion study i.e. computing the time taken to perform services and linking it
with the record time. Another parameter may compute the number of new
customers whom marketing staff can draw to the bank. The extent of success
of the management of direct services to customers as a whole can also be
measured by the change in the volume of market transactions the customers
conclude with the bank.
2.1.3 Expanding the Base of the Banking Services
Numerous studies conducted by research bodies in the USA have shown
that 80-90 per cent of bank customers’ material assets are kept outside the
banks that customers deal with. This ratio increases every time bank activities
are restricted to current accounts, granting loans and issuing credit cards.^7
This means that ample opportunities exist for banks to attract new deposits
and investments even without expanding customer base. It is only in the last
few years that some Islamic banks have turned their attention towards
expanding the base of their services by extending services of agency for
investment such as creating investment funds and offering special investment
accounts.
However, what cannot be marginalized in contemporary banking is that
the ability of the bank to increase its deposits and other investment funds,
which largely depends on the strength and activity of its financial engineering
department. This is what guarantees continued expansion of its deposits and
as such it has the capacity to constantly increase its investments assets.^8 This
principle is even more valid for the Islamic banks than other commercial
banks because the nature of these banks is based on new innovations in the
art of banking that are far from being the prominent pillars of conventional
banking operation: lending and borrowing. Inventing a flow of investment
products offers customers attractive alternatives that induce them to move
their material assets from other banks or from outside the banking sphere to
the Islamic bank, while, at the same time, attracting new customers with new
deposits. This continuous innovation process is both the foundation and the