Yet another survey is highlighting the
dissatisfaction levels of customers with their banks and urging the
institutions to finally get the message: listen to your customer
and enhance your service and product offering.

This time, a survey by global management
consulting, technology services and outsourcing company Accenture
focused on the UK and Ireland, home to banking heavy-weights
Barclays, Lloyds TSB and Royal Bank of Scotland – and the results
are nothing new, actually:

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The gist was that UK and Irish banks continue
to dissatisfy their customers, with almost a fifth of retail
banking customers (17%) reporting a complaint in 2010, compared
with 14% in 2007.

 

Other key findings
included:

  • Less than half (46%) of retail banking customers said they were
    likely to purchase their next financial product from their current
    bank – a drop of 20 percentage points from the conclusions in the
    2007 survey;
  • The percentage of customers who had purchases a financial
    product from their current bank dropped from 29% in 2007 to 22% in
    2010;
  • One in five complaints were handled poorly;
  • Customers aged between 18 to 24 years were 50% more likely to
    switch banks;
  • Younger customers were also 30% less likely to complain –
    suggesting that they do not hesitate to switch banks when they are
    dissatisfied;
  • Satisfaction levels also fell, from 84% in 2007 to 73%,
    and
  • While recommendation levels declined from 64% to 58%.

Accenture also found that one bank recorded
complaints from a third of its customer base in the year to
end-2010.

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The percentage of customers switching their
banks also increased, albeit marginally in comparison to the above
levels:

16% of customers switched banks in 2010,
compared with 14% in 2007; and 14% said that they were planning to
switch in the next 12 months, an increase of just 1 percentage over
the three-year period to end-2010.

 

Same old recommendation: “listen to
your customers”

Accenture’s recommendations for banks to
enhance satisfaction levels were the same words the financial
industry has been hearing since the onset of the financial
crisis:

“Banks must stop and listen to their customers
or they risk losing them to new entrants and other competitors,”
said Peter Kirk, senior executive in Accenture’s Financial Services
practice, who is also author of the research.

Another recommendations banks have been
hearing a lot of was that they need to find the balance between
offering generation-specific products and services to retain
customers.