On the role of SMS for transaction confirmation with IVR telephone banking

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to deliver empirical results on the effects of (out‐of‐band) short message service (SMS) confirmation messages after transactions have been completed in an automated interactive voice response (IVR) telephone banking service. The research seeks to discover if SMS confirmations have a positive effect on customer relationship to furnish evidence for a proposed business case for a multi‐channel banking service. The paper aims to offer results on customer attitude on the role of SMS with IVR as a multi‐channel customer relationship management (CRM) strategy in digital banking. Design/methodology/approach – The methodology is an empirical study based on a controlled laboratory experiment using bank customers as participants. Questionnaires and user observation techniques were employed to collect quantitative and qualitative data, which were analysed using repeated measures ANOVAs. Findings – Transaction confirmation is shown to be important to customers – whether by an SMS message or within the IVR telephone call itself. Customers judged the role of SMS for CRM as highly desirable after monetary transactions; they prefer the version of the IVR banking service that provides (out‐of‐band) SMS confirmation compared to one that does not – and they judged it significantly higher for quality. However, there were no significant differences detected between customer attitude scores for usability of IVR calls involving funds transfers with, or without, an SMS confirmation. As a consequence, the business case was only developed as far as inclusion of transaction confirmation within the IVR call itself, and not extended to use of SMS. Practical implications – Implications from the results are offered as management insights for the financial services sector in seeking integrated mobile CRM strategies, or “next call avoidance” strategies. Originality/value – The paper reports findings from a controlled experiment with 116 participants that was based on extension of an existing IVR telephone banking service with which they were all familiar as users.