Financial institutions dominate top 10 CX brands, as voted by Australian consumers
Australian consumers have voted Singapore Airlines as the brand with the best customer experience, according to KPMG’s Customer Experience Excellence 2019 report, but financial institutions dominated the top 10.
RACQ Insurance (#2), Bendigo Bank (#3), Paypal (#4), Afterpay (#5), ING (#6), NRMA Insurance (#7) and RACV Insurance (#9) all cracked the top 10, with Dan Murphy’s (#8) and Subway (#10) rounding out the list.
When it comes to local brands, or those headquartered in Australia, RACQ Insurance, Bendigo Bank, Afterpay, NRMA Insurance, and Dan Murphy’s also appeared on that list, joined by The Iconic, Grill’d, Suncorp and Mitre 10.
The top 50 brands, according to Australian consumers (Click to enlarge)
The report sees 2,500 Australian consumers surveyed about their interactions with more than 110 brands, both local and international. This year’s average score was 7.14 out of 10 in the local market, with around three quarters of brands clustered in the 6.5-7.5 range.
KPMG’s partner in charge of customer, brand and marketing advisory, Amanda Hicks, said Australian businesses are struggling to deliver a truly excellent customer experience.
“Responsibility for the customer experience of each channel sits in siloed business units in many Australian companies. This means there’s a lack of overall strategy, or indeed a sense of what ‘the big picture’ looks like,” Hicks said.
“Customer experience has been heightened as a topical conversation in the Australian market through increased attention over the past 18 months in areas as diverse as aged care and financial services. Traditional Australian organisations, which are often tied to legacy ways of working, are struggling to match the digital experience offered by new market entrants. The future challenge for these organisations will be successfully translating their physical presence into a digital blueprint that captures the essence of their brand.”
The top 10 local brands, headquartered in Australia (Click to enlarge)
Grocery retail kept its leading position as the sector with the best customer experience, improving its score to 7.4, while financial services jumped into second position on 7.3.
Utility companies (6.75) and the public sector (6.47) performed poorly, sitting at the bottom of customer experience rankings in Australia.
“The Customer Experience Excellence (CEE) findings suggest that brands that are community-led, abiding by collective values and playing an active role in the community are likely to engage customers over brands that are focused solely on building their customer base,” added Sudeep Gohil, KPMG’s partner of customer, brand and marketing advisory.
“It’s evident amongst customer experience leaders across industry that holding an altruistic stance has become common practice and therefore organisations that choose not to be community focused risk falling behind in years to come.
“The top-ranking insurance brands in Australia (RACQ insurance, RACV Insurance and NRMA Insurance) have all made significant in-roads in delivering a meaningful customer experience. Members continually praise these brands for the significant impact they have on communities across Australia. They do so by partnering with not-for-profit organisations and charities to practice purpose-driven promises they promote to their respective membership bases.”
The findings show that integrity and personalisation are the strongest drivers of net promoter score, and improving a brand’s survey results has significant impact, KPMG said. Revenue growth of the top 50 brands is 54% greater than the bottom 50, and EBITDA (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation) growth 202% greater, both at an aggregated level.
Companies leading the way in CX also have 1.5 times as many engaged employees, which leads to an even better customer experience, according to the report.
Brittney Rigby was Mumbrella's deputy managing editor - news and analysis. She left Mumbrella in April 2021.
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topics
Afterpay
Bendigo Bank
customer experience
cx
Dan Murphy's
Grill'd
ING
KPMG
Mitre 10
NRMA Insurance
RACQ
RACV
Singapore Airlines
Subway
Sudeep Gohil
Suncorp
The Iconic
