Online Banks have Reasons to Smile

Latest results from the Virtual Surveys' Online Banking Survey (V-OBS) reveal stark differences in levels of customer satisfaction with the UK's leading online banks.

Whilst over 80% of customers of Smile and First Direct said the service they receive was Excellent or Very Good, this figure was just over a third amongst online customers of NatWest's service.

According to Quentin Ashby, Director of Virtual Surveys Ltd, who ran the survey across all online banks, 'Overall the service provided by the UK's online banks is improving. We have seen a small but significant increase over the past year in the number of customers who are satisfied with the service their online bank provides. Surprisingly, the only exception to this appears to be one of the Internet only banks (Egg) which might have been expected to be one of the leaders in the field.'

The survey also established what type of banking customers are conducting online. Nearly all customers had viewed their bank statements online over the past 3 months, three quarters had transferred money between their own accounts and three quarters had transferred money to someone else's account or paid bills online.

Furthermore, the research reveals that whilst online banks are generally succeeding in providing easy to use websites, most are lagging behind on customer support and in particular the speed of their online systems.

Ashby reports that 'Whilst online banks are steadily improving the speed of their systems, they still have a long way to go.' In the last quarter of 2002, nearly a third of the customers surveyed had experienced a problem with the speed of their online bank's website in the past 3 months.

The data reported covered 4,892 customers of UK online banks interviewed between October and December 2002. Fieldwork was conducted online using a pop-up survey shown to a random sample of UK Internet users recruited from a variety of (non banking) UK websites. Response rate was estimated to be about 5% of all online bank customers shown the survey.

The survey first asked what online banks are used and then selected one at random to elicit feedback on. This bank was then rated on a set of standard attributes and users stated what problems they have had recently and also offered 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.

More information on the survey and how to join the syndicate can be obtained from www.virtualsurveys.com

All articles 2006-23 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas unless otherwise stated.

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