Self-service technology banking under scrutiny: Does it truly improve customer engagement?

The purpose of this research was to uncover the effect of self-service technology banking on customer engagement among the banking clients of Kathmandu, Nepal. This study embraced website attributes, fulfillment, privacy, security, responsiveness, and ease of use as independent variables and customer engagement as a dependent variable.  This research employed customer engagement theory for evaluating the emotional, psychological, and behavioral connections between brands of products or services and their customers. Similarly, the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) adopted in the study encompasses several ideas of technology adoption, particularly concerning the behavioral aspects of users. Moreover, this study embraced a descriptive and causal research design to test the research hypotheses. The study covered the digital banking service users in Kathmandu, Nepal. The primary sources of information used in the study were cross-sectional data. The purposive sampling technique was used for the study. Moreover, 416 structured questionnaires were distributed to the target customers, and 150 useful ones were received. Similarly, the research used descriptive and inferential statistics to reflect the widespread characteristics of respondents and generate the results of correlation and regression analysis. Additionally, the research explored reliability through the Cronbach's alpha test. The findings of the study revealed a positive effect of website attributes on customer engagement; however, this effect was found to be insignificant. Next, the findings depicted a positive and significant impact of fulfillment and privacy on customer engagement. Similarly, the evidence derived from this study depicted a positive and significant effect of security, responsiveness, and ease of use on customer satisfaction. Thus, the findings of this research can be a foundation for policymakers, banking institutions, and other stakeholders while crafting strategies to create customer engagement in digital banking services. Finally, the findings of this research can contribute to the existing theory by making it easier to comprehend technology-based banking services.