INFLUENCE OF E-BANKING SYSTEM ON CUSTOMER SERVICE DELIVERY AT CRDB BANK IN TANZANIA A Project Management Perspective

The study assessed the Influence of Electronic Banking System on Customer Service Delivery at CRDB Bank in Tanzania. Specifically, the study examined the types of e-banking system services provided by CRDB bank in Dar es Salaam, analyzed the importance of e-banking system usage on customer service delivery at CRDB Bank in Dar es Salaam and examined the challenges facing customers on using e-banking systems at CRDB bank. The study employed a mixed research methods approach that combined qualitative and quantitative methods using a sample of 129 respondents composed of CRDB Bank customers and managers who were sampled using convenience and purposive sampling, respectively. The questionnaire, in-depth interview and documentary review methods were used for data collection. The analysis of data was done using the IBM SPSS software version 20, Microsoft Excel and Nvivo 10 software. The study findings show that e-banking system improves the delivery of service to customers at the CRDB Bank. The adoption of e-banking systems were aimed to ease the challenges that customers faced when accessing traditional financial services such as long queues, handling bulk cash, time consuming and high service charges. In this regard, the study found that the introduction of e-banking systems has improved the delivery of service to customers as customers can now access financial services at any time within 24 hours, reduced handling bulk cash, no time consuming waiting to access financial services and low service charges when accessing financial services through e-banking systems. The findings further revealed that e-banking systems were a preferred and secured way of delivering services to customers. Nevertheless, customers faced the challenges to accessing e-banking systems including lack of customer awareness, lack of training, low security and privacy which are also important determinants for adoption of e-banking systems to customers. Overall, the study findings, analysis and discussion affirm that, despite clients acknowledging the benefits of using e-banking when compared with the bank hall counter, access to e-banking services is mainly linked with accessing the Automated Teller Machines (ATMs) and Sim-banking, leaving out other services which have low usage or not used at all by the customers. Based on the findings, the study recommends that financial institutions should utilise the project management lifecycle, which involves proper design of the service, proper execution of services designed, and monitoring and evaluation of the performance of implemented services to establish whether the implemented services meet the needs of customers. In addition, financial institutions should improve the security and privacy of customer information to boost customers’ trust in e-banking. The study also recommends further research on evaluating customer satisfaction with e-banking services.