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Today’s business world has noticed rapid acceptance of modern information technology (IT) devices in business activities. Manufacturers, retailers and service providers are increasingly considering innovative options for meeting customers’ expectations and delivering value to customers (Oraedu et al., 2021; Pham et al., 2019). In line with this, business organisations are embracing and adopting various self-service technologies (hereinafter referred to as SSTs) as a veritable tool for meeting up with customers’ demands and making up for human deficiencies in service delivery processes. The global usage of SSTs is projected to reach up to 31 billion users by 2020 (Kim & Yang, 2018). These new technologies have allowed customers to serve themselves and become co-creators of value through the production-consumption cycle (Mukerjee, 2020). In addition, SSTs have transformed the traditional service encounter, which a priori thrives on human-to-human interactions, to one mediated by technology (Kim & Yang, 2018), thus, posing a challenge to customer relationship management.
The banking industry has also joined the bandwagon in adopting SSTs as a means of exploiting economies of scale and easing customers’ access to banking services (Mukerjee, 2020). However, Lin and Hsieh (2006) argue that although most customers, particularly in the western world, have conquered their fears of SSTs, some others, especially from the developing countries, still worry about using SSTs. Previous studies noted that users’ anxiety, stress and unwillingness to accept innovative changes can result in the avoidance of IT-related systems and invariable accentuate dissatisfaction towards such systems (Ugwuanyi et al., 2021; Curran et al., 2003; Meuter et al. 2003). Generally, there is hesitation in adding SSTs to service delivery as Anand (2011) noted that some retailers who had earlier employed SSTs switched back to a human-to-human transaction in a bid to enhance customer service, while some customers were found to avoid SSTs where they existed. Undoubtedly, a lot of contextual issues can create SSTs dissatisfaction and ultimately make consumers avoid SSTs. For instance, in the Nigerian banking context, the increased online financial fraud, poor internet penetration, customers’ inflexibility and low computer literacy, as well as the lack of confidentiality of personal information are among factors that can impact customers’ adoption and continuous use of technology-based self-service (Wang et al., 2020).