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CTMA Home >> About our clients >> Industry perspectives - Financial services

 

Industry Perspectives:

Financial services

Many banks appear
to operate with
a significantly compromised customer retention strategy 

Industry perspectives:

- Local government

- Financial services

- Retail satisfaction

 

CTMA's annual industry-wide customer experience baseline study reveals disturbing trends for the financial services industry.

In 2005 when CTMA conducted its first annual customer experience baseline study amongst customers of New Zealand retail banks, the study provided strong evidence that many banks operate with a significantly compromised customer retention strategy.  This business risk often remains unseen because a traditional approach to measuring customer satisfaction often fails to show the impact of poor service on the bank’s profitability.

The study estimated that the problems customers experience when banking, and the way many New Zealand banks currently handle customer complaints, may be placing between 8% and 12% of their annual profits at risk.

The study presented participating banks with valuable insights into their relative strengths, and identified specific opportunities for improvement.

In subsequent annual updates, two disturbing paradoxes have been observed:

  • Although customers of some banks report fewer problems, overall satisfaction and advocacy appears to have dropped.

  • When problems do occur, there appears to be an increase in the percentage of customers contacting their bank for help, but a drop in satisfaction with the action taken by banks in response.

It appears that although most banks are attending to service quality improvements, customer expectations are increasing.  And, when customers go to their banks for help, the problems are often not resolved to the customer's satisfaction.

Bank-specific client work:

CTMA also provides a range of bank-specific consulting and research services in the financial services industry.  These services include:

  • Assistance with service quality improvement programmes

  • Baseline studies - identifying:

    • Overall satisfaction with the banking experience

    • Sources of customer dissatisfaction

    • Customers' complaint behaviour

    • Bank's response effectiveness

    • Impact on loyalty and advocacy

  • Satisfaction tracking programmes - focussed on individual banking processes such as:

    • Application processes for home loans and credit cards

    • Complaints handling and issues resolution processes


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