Australian bank customer satisfaction rises: survey

The satisfaction level of Australian business banking customers has reached its highest level in four years registering 69.6 percent, up from 61.4 percent in 2010, according to a new survey released on Tuesday.

Australia's four big banks -- ANZ, National Australia Bank, the Commonwealth Bank and Westpac -- remain below average with satisfaction of 67.6 percent, compared to other banks with 72.2 percent.

Of the big four, Westpac maintained top position in November with 71.6 percent, followed by NAB on 69.6 percent.

These are the latest findings from the Roy Morgan Business Single Source survey of around 12,000 interviews with business decision makers, and the Roy Morgan Single Source Survey of more than 50,000 people each year.

Despite the improvement in satisfaction over the last four years among banks' business customers, they remain well below the satisfaction level of personal customers.

The satisfaction with banks among personal customers is currently 82.8 percent (up by 6.5 percent points from 2010), higher than the 69.6 percent level for business customers (up 8.2 percent points).

Roy Morgan Research industry communications director Norman Morris said banks have been making a concerted effort to improve customer satisfaction over a number of years, resulting in considerable gains in satisfaction among both business and personal customers.

"A major issue now is how to improve the satisfaction levels among business customers and close the gap with personal customers, " he said in a statement.

"There is a strong connection between the personal and business banks among small business operators and as such a poor performance in one segment is likely to impact on the other segment's result." Endi