Familiarity Breeds Contempt & Affection

In retail banking, around half of all people who either never visit their local bank branch or do so more than five times a month are highly unlikely to recommend that bank to friends or family.

According to a new piece of CoreData tracking research, frequency of contact does not equate to higher satisfaction for the majority of customers.

56.1% of people who never visit their bank and 46.2% of those who do so more than five times a month can be classed as ‘detractors’ (those likely to be unhappy customers trapped in a bad relationship).

However for a proportion of retail banking customers, as you would expect for some, repeat transacting does equate to higher satisfaction.

35.2% of those who, on average, visit their bank in person more than five times a month can be classed as ’promoters’ (those likely to be loyal enthusiasts who keep buying from a company and urge their friends to do the same).

This is ahead of 21.1% of those who tend to never physically walk into their bank branch in order to conduct their banking.

Interestingly two thirds of those who visit their retail bank four times a month (perhaps to make a weekly transaction of some form) can be classified as detractors according to the research.

Overall 25.5% of all participants in the twice-a-year tracking study can be classified as ‘passives’ (those likely to be satisfied but unenthusiastic customers who may be easily wooed by the competition).

Using the notion of Net Promoter Score (NPS), CoreData has developed four new bi-annual tracking measures for the financial services industry.

These cover the retail banking, financial planning, business banking and private banking sectors.

Each of these reports breaks customer satisfaction down to the individual group levels within each of the four sectors.