| Abstract: |
Digital transformation has reshaped South Africa's banking sector, yet the exact mechanism connecting leadership choices to a customer's day-to-day experience remains under-explored. This study asks a fairly direct question: which leadership strategies, if any, move the needle on customer experience in digital banking channels? Drawing on a structured survey of 420 retail banking customers across traditional (legacy) banks and digital-first/challenger banks in the Gauteng and Western Cape metropolitan regions, the research examines five dimensions of leadership vision articulation, employee empowerment, technology investment prioritisation, customer-centric culture building, and change management orientation against measured customer experience outcomes. Service quality perceptions were assessed using an adapted SERVQUAL instrument spanning digital reliability, responsiveness, assurance, empathy, and tangibility of interface design. Data were analysed through descriptive statistics, Pearson correlation, multiple regression, and independent-samples t-tests comparing traditional and digital-first banks. The regression model explained a meaningful share of variance in customer experience scores, with customer-centric culture building and employee empowerment emerging as the strongest predictors, ahead of raw technology spend. Digital-first banks outperformed traditional bank counterparts on responsiveness and personalisation, though the gap narrowed once leadership variables were accounted for. These findings suggest that technology alone is not what customers notice first; leadership behaviour that translates into frontline empowerment and culture appears to matter more. The paper closes with practical implications for South African banking leadership and identifies avenues particularly longitudinal and cross-regional work for future research on leadership-driven customer experience transformation in financial services. |
