Contrary to popular belief, South Africans were satisfied with the level of service they received from local banks, based on the experience of their most recent visit, according to a survey conducted for Business Day by ACNielsen’s Customised Research division.
According to the report none of the banks surveyed scored lower than 80% for customer satisfaction when it came to counter service — the reason for 95% of visits to a bank.
The survey used a sample of 2 496 households including all races and income groups representing close to 16-million or 91% of all urban adult South Africans.
Nedbank was voted best for counter service, according to the 85 South Africans in the sample who visited the bank, 94% of whom claimed they were ”satisfied”. Only six percent were ”slightly unsatisfied”, while not one was ”very unsatisfied.”
Satisfaction was measured on a three-point scale, ranging from ”satisfied”, through ”slightly unsatisfied”, to ”very unsatisfied”, for the question on counter service, as for all other questions in the survey.
The remaining three of the ”big four” retail banks had counter service satisfaction results clustered in the mid-eighties; Nedbank 94%, Absa 88%, First National 83% and Standard 82%.
Nikki Quinn, client service director of ACNielsen Customised Research said the margin of error, which is present in all marketing research, created the possibility of overlaps between some of the figures.
Looking at individual bank results, nearly nine out of 10 Absa clients were satisfied with the counter service of South Africa’s largest bank, while 10% were slightly unsatisfied, and six percent were very unsatisfied.
As with results for other banks, these add up to more than 100% because some customers did multiple transactions and some were recorded as being both satisfied and unsatisfied with different transactions.
At Absa, blank clients and women clients recorded slightly lower satisfaction levels than average.
At Standard Bank, 82% of customers claimed they were satisfied, while 13% were slightly unsatisfied, and seven percent very unsatisfied. Customers who registered their dissatisfaction with the bank’s counter service came from across the income spectrum — five percent of Standard’s upper income customers earning more than R8 000 were very unsatisfied, as were nine percent of customers with household incomes of less than R799.
On the other hand, Indian and coloured customers registered satisfaction levels of close to 90%.
FNB counter service achieved scores in the 80s for all age groups, except the younger set, where the proportion dipped to 76% in the 16-24 year olds category.
Regionally, there was some variation between the provinces, with 78% of Gauteng and 81% of Kwazulu-Natal customers satisfied.
As one of the small banks at the time of the survey, Saambou was represented by only 26 respondents, so that although their level of counter satisfaction was the same as for FNB (83%), statistical considerations meant that the reading on Saambou was less reliable than that of FNB.
The survey netted 57 NBS counter service users, of whom 91% were satisfied.
”South African banks so often seem to be the subject of bad service anecdotes, yet when specifically questioned about their experiences in banks, most people were satisfied with the levels of service received,” Quinn said.
”In ACNielsen’s experience, 90% satisfaction with any service is very good indeed.’
Quinn said many other industries would envy the levels of customer satisfaction attained by South African banks. – Sapa