Abstract
This paper investigates how technology influences banks’ efficient service delivery and reduces customers’ average waiting time in obtaining services in a commercial bank at Obafemi Awolowo University. The Direct non-participatory observation was adopted to record time measurements and primary data. The time measurements were based on customers’ arrival times to the banking hall and the service times of the customers who arrived at the bank between the hour of 12.00pm and 1.00pm which have been previously observed to be the bank’s peak period. Data were fitted into the model and the results computed and analyzed. The findings of the study show that both arrival of customers and service time rate of servers follow a poisson exponential probability distribution, respectively. The results reveal that the mean service rate, the mean time spent in the queue by a customer, and aggregate service rate in the system by a customer are substantially reduced and the waiting line is short in a technology driven bank. The study concluded that only technology driven services can reduce customers’ waiting time and improves efficient service delivery systems in Nigerian modern banking.
1. Introduction
Banks’ service delivery system is sometimes interrupted by rowdiness of its customers and randomness of their arrival and service time. Population explosion is one of the single largest challenges faced by Nigerian commercial banks. This scenario, in banks, makes its customers filed up in a queue system for an orderly service performance. Waiting line or queuing theory is the mathematical application of a statistical model to customers flow management. The queuing system is a day- to- day experience of human endeavor. It is a common experience in factually every economic life. There is hardly any economic activity that waiting time is not essential. Customers wait on line to get attention of the cashiers in the banks and attendants at the filling stations, barber shops, salon shops, bus-stops, supermarkets, telephone booths, toll gates, food canteens. A passenger that travels by air on both local and international routes might be asked to queue up in an orderly manner in order to be served. Queuing theory is not strange to travelers who normally wait on line at the visa department of a foreign embassy for visa; at the travel agent’s office to buy ticket, at the airport to check in luggage and to get a seat assignment. Waiting is a non-value added activity. No customer likes a waiting situation. Therefore, it is always a desire of every customer to obtain an efficient and prompt service delivery from a service system.
