It covers all aspects of the customer experience including service delivery, customer centricity, brand clarity and offer excellence.
Sharesies achieved a top five position across 19 of the 22 measured aspects of customer experience, reflecting strong service delivery against a clear brand promise and particularly standing out as offering a modern point of difference to other financial services providers.
Kantar New Zealand's head of customer experience Jonathan Pickup said Sharesies has been a successful disruptor, simplifying and demystifying the process of investing in the stock market.
"Sharesies' result shows they've been able to successfully challenge previous preconceptions about the complexity of investing in shares or the disposable income needed to start a portfolio.
"And consumer feedback shows they've delivered in a simple, clear and consistent way."
While 2021 has been a challenging year for offline retail brands, Kantar's research indicates larger retailers have been successful in delivering positive customer experiences through difficult times.
DIY retailers Mitre 10 and Bunnings Warehouse took out second and third place in 2021, with both brands scoring strongly on customer centricity and offering excellence.
This reflects their ability to continue to deliver an effective service to consumers, even during periods where stores in some regions have been forced to close due to the pandemic.
Noel Leeming also made it into this year's top 10 brands, driven by strong improvements in the way they communicate with customers and their speed of service, despite the challenging landscape.
Overall, the offline retail category has performed relatively strongly on their customer focus, responsiveness and delivering value for money.
Pickup said: "Retailers who found a way to continue to deliver service with a personal touch through the pandemic have seen a strengthening of consumer perceptions, which will stand them in good stead reputationally when the threat of lockdowns eases and normal service can resume."
Kantar's latest results also show consistently strong performance for some of New Zealand's most well-known brands.
Despite a challenging year for the travel and insurance industries, Air New Zealand and AA Insurance remain in the top 10 for 2021.
AA Insurance, which took out the top spot in 2020, now sits in sixth place but continues to perform strongly, with its drop down the rankings more reflective of the strong performance of the brands in the top six.
As in 2020, high street banks continue to perform strongly, with both ASB and BNZ making the top 10. Banks are particularly well regarded this year for their delivery of online services that are easy to use and their responsiveness in dealing with issues.
Kantar's research showed younger New Zealanders were more positive than their older counterparts when it comes to evaluating their interactions with brands.
This pattern was also evident in previous iterations of the research, but the gap between 18 and 29-year-olds and those aged 50 and over is widening over time.
This can be linked to more variability in views on how easy consumers of different ages find it to interact and deal with brands – a particular challenge that organisations have faced during the uncertainty of the past two years.
"The results suggest there is still an opportunity for brands to more effectively support some older consumers to make better use of digital channels," Pickup said.
"Equally, one of the key challenges for brands during the Covid-19 pandemic has been getting the balance right between delivering simple, effective digital service while also recognising when a more human approach is necessary. This year, we've seen the top 10 brands stand apart from the rest for their improvement on aspects such as service speed and providing online or digital services that are easy to use, but there's still clear room for improvement in this area."
