Banks, airlines top customer survey

Photo / Herald On Sunday

Banks and airlines rate ahead of telecommunications companies in a survey of customer experiences by Colmar Brunton, which shows an overall significant fall in negative experiences by customers.

One-third of respondents to the Colmar Brunton Customer Experiences Survey said they have had a particularly good experience when dealing with their bank in the past 12 months.

While one in five consumers report having had a negative experience when dealing with their telecommunications provider in the same period.

Phone companies accounted for one-third of all bad customer experiences. In addition, particularly bad telco experiences outnumber particularly good ones by four to one.

Overall, the personal customer experience in New Zealand has improved in the past five years. There has been a significant reduction in negative customer experiences to 59 percent this year, from 72 percent in 2006 when the survey was last conducted.

ASB ranked top when customers were asked to name one business that they feel is the most dedicated to providing the customer with the best possible service and Air New Zealand was second.

State-owned Kiwibank was third, Westpac, was fourth and BNZ was fifth. National Bank was sixth and New World was seventh.

Vodafone was the only telecommunications company on the list where it ranked tenth.

How companies handle the transition to online and telephone customer service was increasingly key to how consumers perceived them, Dick Brunton, the joint founder and current chairman of Colmar Brunton said.

Colmar Brunton surveyed a nationally representative sample of 1020 New Zealanders aged 15 years and over between July and August last year.

- NZPA