ASSESSMENT ON AUTOMATIC TELLER MACHINE SERVICE QUALITY IN ETHIOPIAN PRIVATE BANKS CUSTOMERS -THE CASE OF UNITED BANK AND WEGAGEN BANK

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to identify, examine and analyze the level of service quality with respect to ATMs in the Ethiopian banking context, taking Wegagen and united bank as point of reference, it emphasized in Automatic Teller Machine service quality. This is mainly because of the absence or rare presence of real e- services like mobile banking and internet banking other than ATM banking service that is on verge of its renaissance. Furthermore, from all e-service based banking services; most customers prefer ATM banking due to many reasons. First, the infrastructure for other e-services is not yet well developed. Second, most of teller based banking services are given for only eight hours a day. In this research the researcher considered ATM banking service quality as a focus area from some selected ATM stations located in Addis Ababa to keep the course of the research flow in control. Therefore, this study measure the ATM service quality from the customer’s point of view, using the five SERVQUAL dimension. Compare and weight each service quality dimension for users and provide some possible recommendations about the existing ATM service on banks in Ethiopia. In this study mixedmethod approach was employed to ensure effectiveness of the research process as the findings of the qualitative data enhance the findings of quantitative one and the vise versa for better understanding of the research problem than either of each alone. The study utilized a convenience sample of mainly business persons who uses ATM card of domestic as well as international banks. A stratified sampling was used in selecting ATM stations from the two banks. According to the findings of the study one of the prime factors that customers give higher emphasis is reliability issue while choosing a bank for their ATM service need. like availability of cash in the ATM, power issue, amount of cash limit to withdraw in a day, network issues and availability of all denomination in the ATM can be taken as the major onces and these banks should give higher emphasis due to the sensitivity issue for their customers with regard to ATMs and they should also take care of the negative response givers because they might spoil the bank reputation. On the other hand customers have doubt about the existence of qualified support staffs, the availability of 24/7 network at the ATMs and recovery speed while there is failure in ATMs for which items the satisfaction is very low. Therefore, banks need to employee qualified staffs that give prompt service for their customers at any enquiry and aware their customer those qualified personnel that the banks had already.