Banks put on notice

The fight to maintain customers in the retail banking sector is set to ramp up next year with a new report showing that customer satisfaction with the ‘big five’ has remained largely static over the past six months.

The Nielsen Company’s bi-annual Retail Banking Report has revealed almost one in 10 customers are not feeling valued by their main bank provider.

Another sore point for customers has been the competitive interest rates on credit cards, with one in eight customers expressing dissatisfaction.

Nielsen financial services director Glenn Wealands said the report indicated that demand for mainstream retail products has slowed dramatically, due to rising interest rates and the sub-prime crisis.

According to Wealands, banks have overlooked the importance of delivering “error-free banking”, which is critical when keeping clients.

“Our latest report shows that the proportion of banks’ customers who will consider switching their banks increases six-fold when errors have occurred. That equates to 20 per cent of all customers who have experienced an error with their main bank in the last 12 months and cited considering switching, versus only 3 per cent for those whose banks have delivered unblemished service.”

Wealands said the impact of errors has the added effect of inhibiting a bank’s ability to attract new customers by losing existing customers who would normally recommend the bank to others, acting as advocates.