Reports Highlight Customer Experience Rankings in Banking, Property Insurance, Cars, & Motor Insurance

Brisbane consulting firm Engaged Strategy released findings from its 2010 Consumer Loyalty Benchmarking Study outlining customer experience outcomes for the banking, property insurance, motor vehicle and motor insurance industries. The survey revealed some surprising results with Bendigo Bank and Bank of Queensland joint winners in the banking sector. Customer loyalty leaders from other service industries include APIA winning both the property insurance and motor insurance categories and Subaru taking out the motor vehicle category.

“Importantly our benchmark study allows companies to transparently see how consumers rate them relative to their competitors when it comes to customer loyalty,” Engaged Strategy CEO and Founder, Chris Roberts said.

In addition to loyalty indicators the report also highlights the volume of positive and negative comments consumers make about their brands and identifies the impact of these.

“Our study shows that typically if a consumer hears one negative comment about a brand they need around four to five positive comments from others before they will seriously consider this brand again. Effectively one negative comment negates four to five positive comments which further illustrates the destructive nature of negative word of mouth,” Mr Roberts said.

Of course in the age of social networking negative impact can be amplified to impact thousands of other potential prospects and current customers in a very short time frame, highlighting the critical importance of word of mouth as both an acquisition channel and retention strategy.

45.1 per cent of respondents said word of mouth is the greatest influence when making a purchase decision for a product or service.

“What these indicators clearly show is that the ability to deliver a superior customer experience which is worthy of recommendation must now be a key focus for organisations wanting to drive growth and increase loyalty.” Mr Roberts said.

The Engaged Strategy Benchmarking Study covers four key service categories and displays results for the nine most popular brands with largest market shares in each category. Rankings are based on survey responses from more than 1,800 Australian consumers that were asked questions across all four categories resulting in more than 6,000 responses. All respondents were existing customers of their respective brands.

Net Promoter Score®, the world’s leading customer loyalty metric, was used to measure loyalty. A company’s Net Promoter Score (NPS) is based on customers’ likelihood to recommend the company’s product or service. NPS is calculated as the percentage of customers who are Promoters, rating the company nine or ten on a zero-to-ten point scale, minus the percentage who are Detractors, rating six or lower.

Banking: There was a tie for the top performing brand with Bank of Queensland and Bendigo Bank both achieving the highest score of 30 per cent. The overall industry average score for the category was only three per cent. In terms of categories the results are as follows:
<ul type=”disc”>
<li>Building Societies are clear leaders achieving a score of 49 per cent.</li>
<li>Credit Unions also achieved an excellent score of 37 per cent.</li>
<li>Second Tier Banks (Bank of Queensland, Bendigo Bank, Suncorp, St George &amp; Bankwest) jointly achieved 12 per cent.</li>
<li>The Big 4 (NAB, ANZ, CBA &amp; Westpac) achieved -21 per cent.</li>
</ul>
Australian banks didn’t fare nearly as well as US banks who achieved an average category score of 20 per cent.

Property Insurance: The top performer was APIA with a score of five, which might not be much to celebrate except when comparing to other scores in this category. Every other brand achieved a negative score and the overall category average was a staggering -22 per cent.

Australian property insurance providers may need to take a few customer experience lessons from their US counterparts who achieved an average category score of 27 per cent and the best US performer achieved a score of 69 per cent.

Motor Insurance: Winning both insurance categories, APIA was also the top performer with a score of eight. Again, every other brand in the study achieved a negative score and the category average was -18 per cent.

Australian motor insurance providers did not fare as well as their US counterparts who achieved an average category score of 33 per cent and the best US performer achieved a score of 78 per cent.

Motor Vehicles: The top performer in this category was Subaru with a pleasing score of 35 per cent. The category average was just two per cent. As a category this was the best performer with five brands achieving positive scores.

The report demonstrates that many organisations have huge opportunities to leverage word of mouth which is easily the most trusted and powerful marketing channel.

“Of course it is not enough to just conduct surveys, the critical aspect is to listen carefully to what customers have to say and then take action strategically and systematically to create experiences that are truly worthy of recommendation,” Mr Roberts said.

Full reports are available for purchase from www.engagedstrategy.com.au

About Engaged Strategy

Engaged Strategy is a boutique strategic consultancy based in Brisbane, Australia. They help businesses grow by developing fresh customer, organisational, staff engagement, customer research and marketing strategies by developing experiences, staff cultures and propositions that are worthy of recommendation.

Engaged Strategy offer an end to end service from conducting surveys to providing actionable insight and assistance in implementing strategies.

Engaged Strategy is an approved Net Promoter Score® Loyalty Partner and is one of the first organisations in the world to achieve this distinction.

Net Promoter, NPS and <a href=”https://www.engagedstrategy.com.au/results/net-promoter-score/”>Net Promoter Score</a> are registered trademarks of Satmetrix Systems Inc., Bain &amp; Company and Fred Reichheld