Högskolan i Skövde

This study seeks to examine the determinants of customer satisfaction within a retail banking setting through qualitative inquiry among bank customers in the city. Unlike existing literature that uses SERVQUAL surveys and regression analysis, this study focuses on customers’ subjective interpretation of their interactions. The qualitative analysis utilized reflexive thematic analysis of twenty in-depth semi-structured interviews. 

Results show that the determinants of customer satisfaction are service quality and branch experience, digital banking experience and infrastructure constraints, trust and relationship quality, and complaint management and service recovery. Moreover, age, occupation, personal income and socioeconomic status shape distinct pathways to building customer satisfaction. Infrastructure-constrained channel migration is a novel phenomenon that reveals customer experience and satisfaction determinants that emerge in the context of network outage-induced frustration from customers on the digital banking channel. 

The study offers five recommendations to RTK Bank on how to improve service delivery, digital banking experience, customer relationship and trust, complaint management, and transparency on bank charges after the 2017–2019 banking crisis in Ghana.