By Adam Smith
Commonwealth Bank has again taken a beating from customers in the latest Roy Morgan Research Bank Customer Satisfaction Report. In further customer backlash over CBA's decision to move first in the November round of out-of-cycle rate rises, the bank fell 17.4% in customer satisfaction over November and October.
The Roy Morgan poll showed satisfaction among CBA's home loan customers fell to their lowest levels in five years. The result dropped Commonwealth Bank from second to third among the big four in terms of satisfaction, with only NAB performing worse. The other major banks were not immune to customer anger either, with ANZ falling 8.2% over the same period, Westpac posting a 7.6% drop and NAB declining 0.6%.
Roy Morgan communications director Norman Morris said CBA may find customer satisfaction levels lagging for some time.
"If the Westpac experience is anything to go by when they received bad publicity for their home loan rate increase at the end of 2009, it is likely to take some time for the CBA satisfaction to recover. Westpac has yet to return to its November 2009 home loan customer satisfaction level, and it is worth noting that the Westpac satisfaction decline at the time was also not as severe as we have seen for the CBA," Morris said.
Among the major banks, ANZ leads customer satisfaction at 76.6%, followed by Westpac at 74.3%, CBA at 73.5% and NAB at 71.7%. Credit unions and building societies continued to perform well, with Credit Union Australia snaring an 87.8% customer satisfaction rating and Heritage Building Society coming in at a score of 90.9%.
Comments