The relationship between service quality and retention within the automated and traditional contexts of retail banking

Purpose – The main purpose of this paper is to highlight the significance of service quality factors on customer retention within the Australian traditional and automated banking contexts. Design/methodology/approach – The relative importance of traditional and automated service quality factors on customer retention was examined with the intention of determining which indicator factors are likely to have a significant impact on customer retention. The paper then proposes a conceptual model of the relationship between service quality factors within the two contexts and customer retention. AMOS 5 was used to test for the hypothesized relationships. Findings – All of the traditional service quality factors have positively influenced customer retention. Conversely, this paper finds that automated service quality in general has no positive significant influence on customer retention. Research limitations/implications – This research was applied to the financial institutions in Queensland, Australia. Further testing of the proposed conceptual model across different industries and countries is needed to determine the generalisability and consistency of this study's findings. Practical implications – The proposed model of retention prediction has the potential to help Australian bank managers to strengthen the customer‐bank relationship and, ultimately, to enhance customer retention ratios. Originality/value – The key contribution of this paper is a conceptualisation of customer retention predictors that takes into account both traditional and automated service customer interactions with banks.