Virtual Surveys Online Banking Awards
July 24 2002
Following a survey of over 8,700 UK Internet banking customers, Virtual Surveys in the UK has published its latest online banking awards.
Overall winner, according to customers, is again Smile with runners up being First Direct and HSBC. However this month they have also given awards to online banks for specific service aspects.
Pete Comley, Virtual Surveys MD notes 'The specific service awards show that there is no one bank that does everything right. However to most users, ease of use and speed/reliability are the key factors, which is where both Smile, First Direct and HSBC banks do best.'
In terms of specific service awards, the winners were:
- Speed of online service: Smile & HSBC
- Site availability: HSBC & RBS
- Overall ease of use: Smile
- Paying bills: First Direct
- Transfers between accounts: Smile
- Standing orders/Direct debits: Halifax
- Viewing statements: RBS
- Statement downloads: Nationwide
- Customer Support: First Direct
- Best High Street Bank: HSBC.
Virtual Surveys regularly publish league tables of overall satisfaction with online banks. Although the broad picture has remained fairly stable over the last 6 months, there have been marked improvements in customers perceptions for some eg HSBC, Cahoot, IF, Lloyds TSB and NatWest.
The data reported in the Virtual Online Banking Survey covers 8747 customers of UK online banks interviewed between April and June 2002. Fieldwork is conducted online using RAWI (RAndom Web Interviewing). Surveys are completed by a random sample of UK Internet users recruited from a variety of (non banking) UK websites. Response rate is estimated to be about 5% of all online bank customers shown the survey.
The survey first asks what online banks are used and then selects one at random to elicit feedback on. This bank is then rated on a set of standard attributes and users state what problems they have had recently and also offer spontaneous suggestions for their banks improvement. Ratings are on a five point scale from Excellent to Poor which is converted to a rating out of 5.
V-OBS is the only UK survey that covers satisfaction with all online banks and is carried out for a syndicate of the major online banks. It has been running since April 2001. For more details visit
www.virtualsurveys.com
All articles 2006-22 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas unless otherwise stated.
