Factors influencing use of social media in service delivery in the banking industry: a case of Kenya commercial bank headquarters

Abstract

Utmost Customer satisfaction is one of the key ingredients to any organization’s success. Organizations strive to ensure that their customers get a plus one service at any customer touch point. The Banking Industry's primary focus has always been optimization of service. The advance of technology has brought a new approach to service delivery known as social media. Recent growth and interest in social media is driving banks to learn more about social networking and how tools such as Face book and Twitter can help them to engage customers, partners and employees, build their brand, reduce costs, boost innovation and increase revenue. This study intended to determine the factors that influenced the use of social media in service delivery in the banking industry. The objective of this study was to determine the factors influencing the use of social media in service delivery in banking industry. the study objectives were to determine the influence of demographic factors in the use of social media in service delivery in the banking industry, to examine the influence of access to social media in using social media in service delivery in the banking industry, to establish the influence of utility of social media in using social media in service delivery in the banking industry, to examine security factors influencing the use of social media in service delivery in the banking industry and to determine the influence of cost on use of social media in service delivery in the banking industry. The study reviewed past studies on the topic and identified the knowledge gap. This research problem was studied through the use of a descriptive research design. The target population was KCB staff working at the contact Centre and KCB Moi Avenue customers. There are 60 staff working in KCB Contact Centre and 1,500 customers served daily on average in the headquarter branch. The study employed Krejcie and Morgan’s table for determining sample size to come up with a sample size of 358 respondents. The study relied mostly on primary data sources where selfadministered questionnaire was utilized as source of data. Data collected purely quantitatively. Quantitative data was coded and Statistical Packages for Social Scientists (SPSS Version 17.0) used to analyze the data obtained. A pilot study to pretest and validate the questionnaire was done. The findings were presented infrequency tables and explanation presented in prose.67.48% and 61.35% of the respondents agree that security and demography respectively influence the use of social media. 61.35% of the respondents strongly agree that access to social medial influences the use of social media. From the multiple regression undertaken it was clear that there was a highly significant relationship (with t statistic p value <0.001 < 0.05) between cost of social media and service delivery in the banking sector in Kenya. Again there existed a highly significant relationship (with t statistic p value <0.0035 < 0.05) between access to social media and service delivery in the banking sector in Kenya. However there was no significant relationship between utility of social media (p = 0.220 > 0.05), security of social media (p = 0.451 > 0.05) and demographic factors (p = 0.4851 > 0.05). Meaning we accept the 2nd and 5th hypothesis and reject the 1st, 3rd and 4th hypotheses respectively. Only cost and access to social media had a significant impact on service delivery in the banking sector in Kenya. In essence therefore, demographic factors, utility of social media and security of social media have no any impact on service delivery in Kenyan banking sector.