Widening gap between retail and business customer ratings

Retail customer satisfaction with the big banks is rising, while business customer satisfaction has been flat over the past year. This is a worrying trend for the banks, says the latest Roy Morgan Research customer satisfaction report.

The Roy Morgan survey for February shows that Commonwealth Bank has the highest retail rating among the Big Four, with a score of 80.4 per cent in February. Its retail rating has risen 3.1 percentage points over the past year.

CBA business customers gave the bank a rating of 64.4 per cent in February. The gap is 16 percentage points; a year ago it was 13 percentage points.

NAB's retail rating in the latest retail survey was 79.2 per cent, compared with a rating of 62.8 per cent from its business customers. The gap has widened from 14.4 percentage points to 16.4 percentage points over the past year.

Westpac's retail rating was 77.7 per cent, compared with a business rating of 67.9 per cent. The gap has widened from 6.9 percentage points to 9.8 percentage points over the past year.

And ANZ's retail rating was 76.2 per cent, compared with a business rating of 60.4 per cent. The gap has widened from 13.1 percentage points to 15.8 percentage points over the past year.

Roy Morgan's industry communications director, Norman Morris, said: "The widening of the gap in satisfaction between business and personal customers over the past 12 months should be of major concern to the banks, as business customers account for around two million personal customers.

"A poor result on the business side will, ultimately, impact on the consumer side," Morris said.

"Business customers require more regular contact from their bank, and this is an area where the banks are rated low."

DBM Consultants' latest Business Financial Services Monitor also shows that the business customer ratings of the big banks have remained flat over the past 12 months. Westpac's overall rating was 7.4 (out of 10) in February and also 7.4 in February last year.

Commonwealth Bank had a rating of 7.3 last month and 7.3 last year. ANZ's rating has remained unchanged at 7.0 over the same period, and National Australia Bank has gone from a rating of 6.9 a year ago to 7.0 last month.

However, DBM found that there was a significant drop in satisfaction among the large businesses in its survey (companies with annual revenues of A$50 million or more).

DBM managing director Dhruba Gupta said large businesses made up 0.3 per cent of the business market but accounted for 49 per cent of revenues.

He said the result suggested that the banks needed to increase their investment in improving and maintaining service levels for this segment.