Customer satisfaction among Australian banks has grown to its highest level in the past 16 years, but sentiment among business customers still lags behind that of personal customers, according to the latest report by Roy Morgan Research.
The ‘Customer Satisfaction – Consumer Banking in Australia Monthly Report’ for January 2012 revealed that bank satisfaction grew to 79.6 per cent, increasing by 4.2 percentage points over the past 12 months. Home loan customers in particular showed an above average improvement of 5.4 percentage points.
National Australia Bank (79.5 per cent) took the top spot in customer satisfaction among the four major banks, followed by ANZ (78.6 per cent), Commonwealth Bank of Australia (77.6 per cent) and Westpac (76.3 per cent).
According to the report, NAB increased its overall satisfaction level by 7.7 percentage points over the past 12 months – spurred on mostly by its 9.5 percentage point improvement among its non home loan customers.
Improving customer sentiment by 4.9 percentage points over the past year, CBA’s result was due largely to its improved performance among its home loan customers, which gained 8.1 percentage points.
According to Roy Morgan, the customer satisfaction survey was finalised prior to the well publicised interest rate increases in early February, and based on previous customer reactions to this type of publicity, the research house expects satisfaction to take a negative blow over the next few months.
Despite the gains made by the big four institutions, the smaller banks are still ahead of their larger competitors, with Bendigo Bank and ING Direct reporting satisfaction levels of 89.5 per cent and 89.2 per cent respectively.
The report also revealed that while sentiment among personal customers sits at around 79.6 per cent, business customers recorded an overall rating of 66.1 per cent.
The disparity between the two markets is likely to attract increasing attention by banks, and possibly the Government, due to the role the small-to-medium enterprises have in terms of expanding employment levels, Roy Morgan stated.
