By Craig Witz, VP, Branch Sales
North Shore Bank is easy to do business with, and our customers are likely to recommend us to their friends and family, according to our recent survey.
Our semiannual Customer Loyalty Survey was administered to customers in November. Each spring and fall, we ask half of our customers to share feedback with us on three topics:
- Ease of doing business with North Shore Bank
- Likeliness to recommend us
- Most important factors in a banking relationship
Our customers’ satisfaction with how easy we make things improved this fall, compared to last spring. As the rating moves closer to the top score of 5.00, the improvement shows we are succeeding in working to remove obstacles from the customer experience and providing high-touch customer service.
The survey also gives customers a menu of nine different aspects of a banking relationship and asks them to choose the three that are most important to them. The strength of our high-touch service culture shines through, as most customers indicate how important friendly service is. In fact, 95 percent of customers gave us a 6 or 7 on the seven-point scale for friendliness.
Besides friendly people, customers under 40 rated convenience of branches and ATMs and online/mobile access as the factors most important to them in a relationship with a financial institution. Customers over 40 value our friendliness and the knowledge of our people as their most important factors.
A customer’s experience with the bank and our team roll up into their likeliness to recommend us to their family and friends. Our Net Promoter Score this fall increased significantly. About 70 percent of our customers are “promoters,” scoring us a 9 or 10 on a 10-point scale when asked how likely they were to recommend us. These are truly exceptional results and reflect the work we do each and every day to identify and address our customers’ needs.
Our customer feedback underscores our focus on providing great service from friendly people. It is important each of us continue to consider how we can make a customer’s journey with North Shore Bank easier — and how we can demonstrate our knowledge and friendliness along the way.