Kristin R. MoyerStessa Cohen here. When the financial crisis hit last Fall, I blogged about how banks should communicate with their customers, all consumers, about the financial crisis – the impact on the bank, what it means for customers, what they should do now. I even wrote a note about it with my colleague Rick De Lotto.
I don’t think bank communication efforts were successful.
According to Bank Technology News, new consumer satisfaction data on the Banking industry from the American Consumer Satisfaction Index (ACSI), (which measures consumer satisfaction in 10 economic sectors and 43 industries) indicates another trend with bad news for banks.
The latest findings show consumers are less than happy with their banks when compared to last year’s results. Although finance as a whole showed a small increase of 0.7 percent over last year mainly due to gains in the health insurance industry, consumer satisfaction with banks fell 4 percent to an ACSI score of 75 out of 100. This most likely was a result of cost-cutting related to the mortgage crisis, such as branch closures, staff reductions and the confusion typical among consumers in the aftermath of M&A activity. This marks a 3.8 percent decrease, according to the study.
Wachovia, included for the last time in ACSI before becoming a part of Wells Fargo, leads the industry but still fell 4 percent to 76. Wells Fargo climbed 4 percent to 72 and Citigroup rounds out the bottom at 69.”
All is not bleak, however, consumers are happy with credit unions.
This quarter also marks the debut of credit unions in ACSI and so far, they’ve made a good first impression. According to the research, credit unions outstripped banks in customer satisfaction with a score of 84. ACSI attributes this score to credit unions’ smaller size relative to most banks. As such, the researchers conclude, they follow a similar pattern of smaller companies in other industries that tend to offer better, more individualized service.
What does this mean? Can or should banks act more like credit unions? I don’t think so. And people will sniff out that kind of posturing now, more than ever. Straightforward communication is probably best – don’t pretend your customers are happy…and do something about it. More transparency, for starters. Take a look at the US Government’s website, recovery.gov, which tracks ARRA funds. New coffee mugs aren’t the answer. Neither are new fees.
Category: Customer Tags: ACSI, banking, banking and investment services, consumer satisfaction, customer communications
4 responses so far ↓
1 Andrea Di Maio February 21, 2009 at 7:45 am
Stessa, http://recovery.gov has already failed to provide a truly readable version of the Act. Not (yet) a best practive in trasparency.
2 Rick DeLotto February 23, 2009 at 9:42 am
Andrea, Rick DeLotto here.
I am confused– what is wrong with a certified true copy of the bill as it was passed? While I want to see the regulations it spawns, they will no doubt be offered up for commentary in in the normal places and timeframes, BUT be linked back to recovery.gov. I am FAR from an administration apologist, but this is far more than I have EVER seen done by anyone else in the USG… and for an outsider, europa.eu is a hard slog as well.
Bills are abstruse, technical documents, not really suitable for presentation in simple language. Historically, anytime anyone has done this they were hiding something.
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