THE IMPACT OF AGENCY BANKING ON CUSTOMER SATISFACTION: A SURVEY ON AGENT BANKS IN KENYA

Abstract

The problem to be investigated was how agency banking has influenced customer satisfaction in Kenya. The research involved coming up with ways on how banks that use agent banking models were able to satisfy their customers’ needs fully and solve problems as they arise. The specific objectives of the research were to find out the relationship between agency banking and on time delivery of customer banking services, find out the extent to which customers utilize agent banking services, to find out the relationship between agency banking and customer service quality assurance, to find out the relationship between agency banking and cost reduction on customer service delivery, and finally to find out whether banks fulfill customer expectation and reliability of agent banking services. The research design involved administering questionnaires to the target population. This target population was customers using agent bank services in the selected regions in Kenya. The target population was 250 agent banking customers. The research used stratified random sampling. It was divided into various strata of gender, age and employment status. The study showed that most customers were satisfied with agent bank services that is a mean score of above 2.0. The factors that led to this were such as banking agents being highly qualified and responsive towards customer satisfaction. The customers said that they would prefer to go to agent bank outlets other than the bank itself. They also said that they were regular agent banking customers and would recommend it to others.