Satisfaction not enough, more trust & better customer experience is key - Asia-Pac Banking+Finance feature article

As a point of differentiation and as a source of competitive advantage trust and customer experience become more important than just satisfaction. - Asia-Pacific Banking & Finance feature article.

The 2012 Australian Bank HuTrust® research study conducted by mext Consulting has been featured together with Capgemini's research in the print version of Asia Pacific Banking & Finance Magazine. The headline article looks at satisfaction not being enough, that trust and customer experience are far more important for customer loyalty and sustained business. For this article Mext MD and HuTrust® developer,Stefan Gräfe, was extensively interviewed on customer trust.

Click here to see the AB+F article or visit mextconsulting.com.



About Stefan Grafe: After an international career as head of creative and strategy for the BBDO and Bates marketing networks in Europe, Asia and Australia, Stefan founded mext as a management consultancy to help clients achieve substantial growth by better connecting with their customers.

What drives bank trust? Update on slideshare now.

First, why would you care? We all know that the banks are not trusted, right? All 4 major banks are, on average, not trusted or just sit on the trust threshold. In business banking none even comes close to an average trust rating.

Trust is the link between customer behaviour and company performance.

If banks could shift their average trust rating by just 5-10%, they would double positive predisposition. A shift of 20% would increase positive predisposition by 400%. On the company performance side, trust, satisfaction and propensity to recommend (NPS) always measure the same and the causality is obvious. So, if you can precisely build trust, you drive business results.

Looking at the facets of trust with HuTrust, all major banks have a similar HuTrust Profile. There is no differentiation (we all know that).  Banks are trusted for their stability and they are trusted for being there in the future. Our qual research repeatedly showed that this is partly perceived to be a result of tight regulation –‘being  kept on the leash by the government’. Considering that all banks say they are heavily investing into relationship building, they appear to miss the point and don’t understand what relationship customers actually want to trust them for.

On trust in a vision or purpose, none gets even close to the trust threshold. Vision is a curious one. Constituting one sixth of trust, it is totally overlooked as a driver of trust and customer engagement. Aside from knowing your strengths and weaknesses, which of the HuTrust facets actually drive trust the most and provide the biggest opportunity? What facets should banks invest into to increase trust – and thereby their KPIs and positive customer behaviour?

In nab’s case vision trust is not only the worst performing trust facet, it is also the most important one to drive trust and engagement. For nab it is also the one facet through which it could differentiate substantially and provide more meaning to 'breaking up' than minuscule rates and fees differences. 

Conversely, for Westpac it is competence trust. Interestingly, neither bank really appears to invest into either of these. Maybe that is the reason why none of the banks make any significant shifts in their satisfaction and NPS scores?

BTW - HuTrust facets account for 63-80% of trust variation & 52-88% of variation in propensity to recommend (NPS).

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