Study: CX for Malaysian banks still 'mired in mediocrity' despite improved performance

Malaysian banks have improved their CX but according to Forrester, it remains "mired in mediocrity". A survey of 2,100 Malaysian adult customers this year found that the aggregate CX score for banks in the country have increased by 2.9 percentage points in 2022 to 65.7 on a 100-point scale. The number of consumers who had excellent experiences also increased by 7 percentage points. Despite this, the 65.7 score was still in the "OK" category, similar to their CX performance in 2021.

Overall, banks in Malaysia did make slight improvements in the CX drivers comprising customer respect, branches, and banking services. This year, Forrester found that banks also made their interactions more effective and slightly easier. In fact, banks such as Public Bank and Maybank are said to be on the "cusp of offering good CX".

Public Bank topped Forrester's Malaysia CX index, jumping three places. Its performance score also improved to 69.5 from 63.3 last year. While Public Bank made its interactions easier and more effective, the bank's emotion score leapt by 15 percentage points. Emotion score is the number of positive interactions for each negative one.

According to Forrester, the bank also increased the amount of emotionally positive interactions for each negative interaction to 21 from nine. At the same time, Public Bank's website and mobile app score also increased by 13 percentage points. This score is said to be the most crucial driver category for banking CX this year.

Meanwhile, Maybank slid one place to second and its performance score was 68.6. CIMB maintained its ranking at third while Hong Leong Bank was fourth. AmBank Group's and RHB Bank's performance score was slightly below the industry average of 65.7. Public Bank and Maybank have an average emotion ratio of 16 while the ratio for AmBank and RHB Bank was six.

Without a doubt, happy consumers will drive brand loyalty. But other factors also lead to brand loyalty too. In fact, Forrester found that the top five are makking customers feel confident, happy, valued, respected, and delighted. Among those who are confident of Malaysia's banking industry, 79% intend to spend more with the brand and 74% will advocate for it.

On the other hand, a brand's loyalty is most at threat when customers feel disappointed, neglected, frustrated, annoyed, and unappreciated. Of those consumers in Malaysia who feel disappointed, only 7% plan to spend more with the brand and just 9% will advocate for it.

Three ways to improve your CX

1. Find out which drivers are crucial for the brand

The top drivers are making things easy to do on the website; ironing out problems and issues quickly; ensuring that employees at the branches answer all customer questions; and processing transactions quickly.

2. Use different forms of data

Aside from Forrester's CX Index data, brands should also look at other forms of data including voice-of-the-customer feedback and operational metrics to identify pain points and other problem areas. Following this, they should then make use of qualitative research tools such as interviews, ethnographies, and journey mapping to understand those problems. Brands should also prototype and iterate solutions to these issues to improve their CX.

3. Look to others to see how they have improved

Last year, companies improved their CX by using the pandemic to accelerate their transformations. In 2020, they made CX an explicit part of their enterprise-level strategy and three years ago, brands went back to basics by focusing on their fundamentals and working with their call centres to learn about customers' most pressing needs.

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