Banking and Financial Services Top UK Customer Satisfaction

Bright report reveals how UK industries perform when it comes to customer service.

The banking and financial services sectors have the best levels of customer service satisfaction in the UK – that’s according to Bright, which today released the results of its first ever ‘Industry Satisfaction Survey’, via its latest Customer Experience Report.

According to information from the Federation of Small Business (FSB), the UK’s bank branch network has halved to just over 8,000 in the past 25 years as banks increasingly move to a digital presence. While this is not without issues, the Bright report found that customer satisfaction amongst customers in this sector remains high.

Arguably bucking the trend of widely held consumer perception, banking was rated as best sector in the UK when it came to general customer satisfaction with 91% of those polled/its customers happy with the levels of service they receive. This was closely followed by the Financial Services sector, with 89%.

The fourth annual Bright report, which looks at the state of the UK’s customer service industry, is based on insights gathered from more than 1.5 million post-transaction surveys in 2016 throughout the UK. These insights have been sourced by looking at every aspect of customer service across a variety of the UK’s leading sectors. This included elements such as; average response time, agent handling skill, query resolution, call handler knowledge and customer after care to name a few.

Commenting on the report, Mats Rennstam, MD, Bright UK, said:

“Only a few years ago, the findings of this research would have been unthinkable. It has taken a huge amount of effort for the banking and financial services industries to turn the tide of public opinion that was so vociferous in its criticism post-2007. However, with the links between quality customer service and profits becoming increasingly clear, both sectors have done much to convince customers that they not only understand and care about them, but are actually doing something about it.”

Outside of the finance sectors, the Utility sector was the third highly rated industry when it came to general customer satisfaction, with 87%. Retail and Media followed with 86% and 81% respectively. Someway behind is the Housing sector (77%) and Transport and Travel (72%), while Public Sector comes in lowest with only 71% of customers being satisfied with the service they receive.

The list of sectors in full is:

• Banking: 91%
• Financial Services: 89%
• Utility: 87%
• Retail: 86%
• Media: 81%
• Housing: 77%
• Transport & Travel: 72%
• Public Sector: 71%

Rennstam continued:

“There is no silver bullet solution for achieving a world-class customer experience. However, there are things that can be done in customer service departments that do not require a lot of time or monetary investment. The fact is that today, most customer feedback is available verbatim via voice of the customer recordings that are fed back to staff and managers, which is having a much greater impact than traditional stats and charts, if analysed and monitored in the right way.”