10 Foot Barge Pole
An increased number of Australian retail bank customers are unlikely to recommend their banks to friends and family.
More than half of bank customers (50.7% up from 46.6%) would not recommend their primary bank to loved ones according to the latest bi-annual CoreData Retail Bank Tracker.
As banks continue to wax lyrical about offering better customer service and citing any evidence that things may be improving, it seems dissatisfaction is on the rise.
Using the well known Net Promoter Score measure, there was a slight slip in the percentage of customers that can be termed promoters – down from 27.5 in the first half of 2008 to 26.6% in the second half.
Meanwhile there was a slight drop in those classified Passive – 25.9% to 22.7%, unfortunately most of these fell into the Detractor category hence the increase to 50.7%.
The next set of bi-annual findings are due out in late July.
The non-major banks are still out-gunning their more illustrious rivals with much higher promoter rates than the majors.
In fact non-majors collectively report almost half of their customers – 47.5% as Promoters compared to only 18.6% of the top five (really top four banks).
As for Detractors, in the second half of 2008 there was a slight increase in the number of customers from both the major banks and the non-banks falling into this group.
Detractors for the majors increased over the period from 55.7% to 58.7%, while the non-banks experienced a rise in numbers to 31.6% from 25.8% earlier.
Considering the uncertainty that surrounded the banking sector in the latter half of 2008 some respondents may have been partly to blame for the increase in those who aren’t overly happy with their primary retail bank.
Which Bank says:
I wonder how the Big 4 banks compare on the above stats. Which bank do you think would come off worse? I know which bank I would bet on…