A Proposed Methodology for Enhancing Service Del ivery Systems: An Applicat ion to Internet Banking

The widespread commercial use of the Internet to provide services to customers, without direct personal interaction, has created new challenges in several fields of knowledge, in particular Marketing and Information Technology. This paper addresses the problems faced by banking institutions that are adapting their service operations and their Service Delivery Systems (SDS) to the Internet channel, in order to offer integrated, high-quality customer service across all their service offerings. Aiming at providing the final customer with higher levels of satisfaction, this work brings together results from Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) research and Services Marketing research in order to propose a new methodology for developing high quality service offerings on the Internet. The methodology aims at deriving perceived value for the Internet channel from customer characteristics, interaction characteristics and performance attributes of the channel. This early marketing analysis will enable improved specification of both functional and non-functional requirements for user interface design. For instance, (i) a clear ranking of essential use cases, e.g., menu choices, ordering processes or payment procedures; and (ii) relative relevance of non-functional or experience requirements, such as response time, ambience and decor (graphic design) of the Web site. In future research, this methodology will guide a field study involving interviews, database exploration, focus groups and surveys of Bank users. The results of this more exhaustive study will enable banks to focus on designing successful operations on the Internet that can actually be expected to result in improved customer satisfaction. Software Engineers and Marketeers can then work together to offer enhanced Internet based Service Delivery Systems.