One smaller bank is spades ahead of the Big Four in terms of customer satisfaction, which researcher Roy Morgan puts down to loan satisfaction.
Bendigo Bank has been named Business Bank of the Year in Roy Morgan Research’s Customer Satisfaction Awards.
This is the third consecutive year the bank has received the award, which the company says is because it looks after its staff.
“Over the past 12 months we have invested heavily in staff training, and looked at innovative ways to engage with our business network,” said Bendigo retail executive Dennis Bice.
The bank has also been investigating how it can better do business digitally, he said.
“We know we must remain nimble and evolve to meet the changing needs of our business customers.”
Roy Morgan research shows Bendigo is well ahead of competitors with 81.5% customer satisfaction.
The satisfaction level of the business customers of the four major banks reached 65.4% in January 2014, an increase of 1.7% since January 2013.
Westpac has been the top performer among the big four for business customer satisfaction for over two years but
CBA took the lead in December 2013.
In January, Westpac (67.3%) regained the lead from CBA (67.0%). These two banks remain well ahead of
NAB (62.9%) and
ANZ (64.2%).
Over the last year, ANZ showed the biggest improvement in business customer satisfaction (up 4.2 points to 64.2%) followed by CBA (up 3.5 points to 67.0%).
NAB was down 0.4 points to 62.9% and Westpac was down 0.6 points in business customer satisfaction.
“Although the business customers of the Big Four banks have shown improving satisfaction levels over the last twelve months they remain well behind their personal customers,” said Roy Morgan communications director Norman Morris.
“This gap has remained basically unchanged from 12 months ago, most likely due to banks preferring to remain focused on the relatively safer area of consumer banking, particularly home lending.
Morris said an important area where all four major banks are not rating as well as their smaller competitors, like Bendigo, is satisfaction on how well they are meeting business loan needs.
