Credit Unions and Community Banks Continue to Lead Large Banks Customer Satisfaction

With several notable exceptions, the 20 largest banks in the United States continue to be outpaced by credit unions and community banks in ratings for customer satisfaction and loyalty according to a new Survey on branch customer service.

The second annual Informa Research Services’ Branch Customer Satisfaction Survey reveals that retail customers of the Top-20 institutions, each with $50 billion and more in deposits, give these largest banks the lowest ratings for satisfaction and loyalty. Credit unions and community banks received the highest customer ratings for both satisfaction and loyalty.

“Yet a few of the large banks are clearly leading the way in providing exemplary branch customer service,” said Paul Lubin, senior vice president of Informa Research Services, who supervised the Survey. “These notable exceptions among the largest banks are Washington Mutual, SunTrust and Wachovia which outrank all except for community banks and credit unions,” said Lubin. The Informa Research Services Survey also found that Citizens and Bank of America are also among the “Top-20 institutions that do well in garnering customer commitment.”

The 2006 Survey shows that in “aggregate, credit unions out-perform all, including community banks, in terms of generating high ‘satisfaction’ and ‘likelihood to stay.’”

Community bank customers cluster near the top for high levels of satisfaction and likelihood to stay, said Lubin, adding that “while community banks achieve the same satisfaction numbers as credit unions, fewer of their customers rated them highest for ‘likelihood to stay.’”

Customers of mid-sized regional institutions indicated a “distinct drop both in satisfaction and likelihood to stay,” compared with the 2005 Informa Research Services Survey.