Canstar Blue commissioned professional market researchers, Colmar Brunton, to survey 5,000 customers around Australia about their satisfaction with their banks in March this year.

ANZ customers rated their bank the best overall, and first in the supporting categories of branch, call centre, problem solving, innovation, friendliness and ‘wow factor’.

Last year brought some major changes at ANZ, with the launch of new branding, expansion into Asia, and the hiring of Philip Chronican, as its new Australian CEO. However, these changes appear to have had no impact on customer satisfaction, with customers again voting ANZ number one in customer satisfaction.

NAB has been the big mover in customer satisfaction over the last year, possibly due to the highly publicised ‘abolishment’ of bank exception fees, very competitive home loan rates, and the expansion of their free ATM access in partnership with RediAtm. NAB was awarded second place for overall satisfaction, and equal second ranking for the call centre, problem solving, innovation, and ‘wow factor’ supporting categories. It was rated third rank for branch and friendliness.

Commonwealth Bank received third rank status for overall satisfaction. However, the Commonwealth scored second rank status in all supporting categories showing that while the bank scores well in the supporting categories, customer perception of overall satisfaction is slightly lower. Westpac’s customers scored the call centre strongly, awarding it an equal second ranking.

Bank fees, interest rate increases above the RBA rate and poor interest returns on savings were nominated as disadvantages by customers who were dissatisfied with their banks.

27 Jul 2010.