M. Tech. Business Administration / Technology has become an integral part of the marketplace and customers are increasingly given the option or are being driven to access services by themselves through the use of Self-Service Terminal. The purposes of this study is to investigate factors that influences customer perceptions and associated value of self-service terminals machines within the South African banking context and particular within the province of Gauteng, as well as understand the influences of demographic variables that lead to acceptance and usage of self-service terminals in Gauteng.

Financial services institutions invest in self–service technologies for various reasons. These include the demands to rationalise costs and to meet the channel preferences of a „technology- savvy‟ client base. Some advantages of self–service technologies (“SSTs”) include the optimisation of staff activities and faster and improved customer services. Retail banks experience various migration-related costs when migrating customers to an SST environment; in terms of both branch infrastructure and the development of employee skills. Some customers continue to favour face-to-face service interactions, which necessitates an identification and evaluation of the necessary skills required by employees to facilitate this migration process. This study aims to both identify and classify the requisite skills needed by financial services professionals to enable them to migrate customers from physical to electronic service channels; including ATMs. With the appropriate training and competencies, employees can guide customers more effectively through the migration process in a non-judgemental way. This would, in turn, address the lack of self-service technology understanding among customers in the longer term. The lack of support from skilled service employees has, in many instances, led to customers paying higher transactional fees and experiencing inconvenience at physical channels, thereby resulting in overall lower self-service usage. / Business Management / DBL

Financial services institutions invest in self–service technologies for various reasons. These include the demands to rationalise costs and to meet the channel preferences of a „technology- savvy‟ client base. Some advantages of self–service technologies (“SSTs”) include the optimisation of staff activities and faster and improved customer services. Retail banks experience various migration-related costs when migrating customers to an SST environment; in terms of both branch infrastructure and the development of employee skills. Some customers continue to favour face-to-face service interactions, which necessitates an identification and evaluation of the necessary skills required by employees to facilitate this migration process. This study aims to both identify and classify the requisite skills needed by financial services professionals to enable them to migrate customers from physical to electronic service channels; including ATMs. With the appropriate training and competencies, employees can guide customers more effectively through the migration process in a non-judgemental way. This would, in turn, address the lack of self-service technology understanding among customers in the longer term. The lack of support from skilled service employees has, in many instances, led to customers paying higher transactional fees and experiencing inconvenience at physical channels, thereby resulting in overall lower self-service usage. / Business Management / DBL