Towards a context-aware multi-channel messaging model for African banks: preliminary investigations

Abstract

Technological advancements have provided Banks several means of sending messages to their customers. In the context of business-to-customer interaction, Single Channel Messaging (SCM) model is prominently used by most Banks in Africa. SCM is restricted to one communication medium and messages are not sent based on urgency or priority. The ultimate aim of this research study is to propose and implement a model for Multi-Channel Messaging (MCM) that addresses the weaknesses of SCM. However, in this paper we only present and motivate the proposed conceptual MCM model. Unlike SCM, MCM uses different modes of communication to pass on information to Bank customers. Depending on the importance of a message, MCM provides mechanisms for choosing a channel, amongst available options, that matches the message's urgency or priority. The suitability of the Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) as an implementation approach is highlighted as it offers a robust, loosely coupled and scalable strategy for realising the requirements of MCM.