Customers satisfaction with ATM banking in Malawi

Automated Teller Machine (ATM) banking is the second popular access channel to banking services behind branch banking in Malawi which offers competitive advantage in the homogenous market of retail banking products and services. It is important that banks achieve service quality and customer satisfaction to remain competitive through ATMs. The results are from 353 ATM card users where over half are satisfied with ATM services from their respective banks. All the ATM service attributes within the five service quality dimensions are important to ATM service users but performance is perceived good in ATM technology related attributes and poor in employee and management functionality related attributes. The results have further found that all service quality dimensions significantly correlate with customers satisfaction with ATM services and that reliability is the most important dimension followed by responsiveness, empathy, assurance and tangibles are the least important dimension agreeing with previous studies by Berry et al., Parasuraman et al. and Zeithmal et al. However, not all service quality attributes rated important by users contributed to their satisfaction. Therefore, the results designate that for banks to remain competitive through ATM banking efforts should be exerted in providing responsive ATM services. Further investment in newer ATM technologies may have marginal returns in creating competitive advantage since all banks are installing newer ATM technologies that enhance functionality and reliability of ATMs but differences are in the provision of responsive services that augment the ATM services provision.   Keywords: Customers’ satisfaction, ATMs, service quality.