Welcome to another monthly insight session on the performance of US Banking apps. In this session we focus on US National Banks (Wells Fargo, Citibank, Bank of America, Chase, and Capital One) and in particular, an update on Wells Fargo and some good news for Bank of America. The others will be covered off in separate sessions and we have banks even beyond this as well.
The state of the market. This is what we call our engaged customer score. Looking at that across the market we can see there's all sorts of various movements. One of the banks of note, Wells Fargo, sort of the elephant in the room.
We saw a big drop in scores in February for Wells Fargo, but there's some improvement in March. Hopefully those new UI experiences are actually sticking and their customers are getting better experience, but we can't tell yet if their scores are really going to jump up anytime soon.
Bank of America Spotlight
The way that Bank of America has improved their scores from around August - October. They were averaging around 4, they're now up to 4.4 in March - a gradual improvement across those 6, 7 months, or so. The August, October period was actually their low points; they were higher previously. It's taken them around a 6-month turnaround to get back up. So, what have they actually done? Is this an iOS or an Android thing? One of the things about a lot of these scores, the banking app feedback is a lot about Android use. This result has pretty much come from an Android increase. We saw the scores bottom out in August and October and we saw that the pickup has mainly come from the Android scores increase.
With a score of 4.5 in March compared to a score of around 4 in August, we can see there's a gradual increase across there. So, great news for Bank of America. Let's have a look though at one additional piece. Where has that come from? One of the things we can have a look at is the model we put over the data, called SURF
SURF comes from 4 key areas: Security Authentication, User Interface, Reliability, and Features & Functionality. Where is the pain coming from for customers? The lower the score, the better.
One of the biggest movers is around this idea of reliability. That's actually more than halved. This is a good thing. Non-reliable is actually a good thing. In this case we've got a 5.4 for user interface issues and that's down to 3.6.
Then we get security authentication. It was about 94% of people talking about that as a problem, that's now more than halved. So, across the board, there's been a lot of improvement across time. A lot of incremental changes as those new releases come through. A lot of hard work from the Bank of America team month-on-month as they fix those issues that have arisen across time. That's great!
Let’s have a look overall. One of the things we can see is that bugs are at a third of the level they were in October. In March, difficulty logging in is at about a third as well and there's an area on ‘poor’ with regard to money transfer features, which is about half the level it was in the past, in that October low point for Bank of America.
A lot of things have improved in various features and we can actually see the updates they release in the app stores. We can see that incremental increases in improvements is what they're actually doing, which is pushing their score up. A lot of hard work from that team.
One of the things we can see was happening in October for poor app money transfer feature, where people could not set schedule an auto pay. That's obviously a problem and it seems like a very basic feature, but that seems to have now disappeared for people. Obviously a major issue there which seems to have been rectified in the current period. Also, there's some payment options that are accessible for people.
There's other things also, like people try to click bill pay, they get a blank screen. Various bugs and crashes across the board have been fixed by the Bank of America.
We’ve looked at Bank of America in March, now we're just looking at March in total . All the SURF problems, their pain points, averaging just under 15, but the leader is Citibank and they're averaging around 7 month-on-month, and the consistency of Citibank where they don't have issues across these periods and they’re consistently sitting below 10 in total for all of the issue topics. That's what keeps them at the top. Sitting at 4.6 across time they're one of the most dominant brands in the market. The effort they must be putting in to make that work is really, really solid.
Wells Fargo has obviously had some recent problems, but in the past they had numbers like we see for the rest of the banks. They just need to get their scores back in-line with their competitors in a reasonably quick time.
Let's have a look at what it looks like for iOS. Let's have a look where Bank of America sits. We can see that iOS is not performing as well as Android is. Although it's a small part of the market I think Bank of America needs to place focus there as well to pick up those problems and they can then get incremental increases in their scores. We can see, even Citibank is leading very solidly on iOS.
So, overall a really solid improvement for Bank of America.They've still got room to improve compared to say Citibank and in iOS, for example, but very solid improvement.
It will be interesting to see where, in particular, Bank of America and Wells Fargo feedback and scores moves to next.
Video Exec Summary:
US National Banks Sector = Wells Fargo, Citibank, Bank of America, Chase, and Capital One.
We see improvements in Wells Fargo’s banking app scores since their large drop in February. Bank of America has seen gradual improvements across the last circa 6 months. Citibank continues to consistently score well month-on-month. Touchpoint Group’s SURF reporting provides more detailed insights into pain points for customers - considering 4 key areas: Security Authentication, User Interface, Reliability, and Features & Functionality.
Video Transcript:
00:00 Glenn: Welcome to another monthly insight session on the performance of US Banking apps. The reception we've had to date has been so good that we've decided to respond to requests by segmenting these sessions. Tony Patrick is going to go into further detail into that shortly.
In this session we are going to be focusing on US National Banks and in particular, an update on Wells Fargo and some good news for Bank of America. Tony, I'm just going to hand it straight over to you because we've got a lot to get through and not a lot of time.
00:42 Tony: Brilliant. Thanks, Glenn. Welcome everyone. Today, as Glenn mentioned, we're focusing on the US National Banks.
As you can see here we have the 5 in there:
Wells Fargo, Citibank, Bank of America, Chase, and Capital One.
The others will be covered off in separate sessions and we have banks even beyond this as well.
What I'll do is kick off with the state of the market.
This is what we call our engaged customer score. Looking at that across the market we can see there's all sorts of various movements across there. One of the ones which I'll just have a quick look at, at the moment, we discussed last time, Wells Fargo, sort of the elephant in the room.
What we saw, we saw, that big drop in February, and there's some improvement in March. Hopefully those new UI experiences are actually sticking and actually your customers are getting better experience, but we can't tell yet if that's really going to sort of jump up anytime soon. So, just a quick update.
Let's move back to those other numbers we saw before. In here, one of the things which is interesting is the way that - I will just focus this on Bank of America, the way that Bank of America has improved from their scores around August, October, around that area there. They were averaging around 4, they're now up to 4.4 in March.
That's a gradual improvement across those 6, 7 months, or so. That August, October was actually their low points; they were actually higher previously. It's taken them sort of like a 6-month turnaround to get back up. So, what have they actually done though? Let's have a look at, one thing in here we can have a look at is….
Is this an iOS or an Android thing? One of the things about a lot of these, this banking app feedback is a lot of Android use. We can see there that this has pretty much come from an Android increase. We can see those bottom outs in August and October and we can see that the pickup there has mainly come from that Android increase.
With a score of 4.5 in March compared to a score of around 4 in August, we can see there's a gradual increase across there. So, great news for Bank of America. Let's have a look though at one additional piece. Where has that come from? Before I dive into this, there's a lot happening here, but one of the things we can have a look at is this model we put over the data called SURF
It comes from these 4 key areas you can see at the bottom here around Security Authentication, User Interface, Reliability, and Features and Functionality. Four key areas, and this is actually pain points. Where is the pain coming from for customers?
What we can see here is, obviously here, the lower is better and we can see that low point hitting in March and where we saw that high point in the score. What we're seeing here is August and October, I might have a look here and just compare October to March and see what's happened here.
We can see there that, probably one of the biggest movers is around this idea of reliability. That's actually more than halved. This is a good thing. Non-reliable is actually a good thing. In this case here, we've got a 5.4 for user interface issues and that's down to 3.6 sort of 50% improvement.
Then we get here to security authentication. It was about 94% of people talking about that as a problem, that's now more than halved. So, you see across the board, there's been a lot of improvement across time. A lot of incremental changes as those new releases come through. A lot of hard work from the Bank of America team month-on-month as they go to fix those issues that have arisen across time. That's great!
Let's have a look at another piece. Here we're gonna have a look at a bit of detail around, let's compare those two time periods.Here we're comparing October to March and I'll just show you what's inside these filters here, we're comparing, this is just Bank of America.
Let’s have a look overall. One of the things we can see is that bugs have almost, are at a third of the level they were in October. In March, difficulty logging in is at about a third as well and there's an area here on poor at money transfer features, which is about half the level it was in the past, in that October low point.
A lot of things have improved in various features and we can see actually from there, their updates they release in the app stores. We can see that incremental increases in improvements is what they're actually doing, which is pushing their score up. A lot of hard work from that team.
One of the things we can see here. If I look at what was happening in October for poor app money transfer feature, we can see on the right here some various comments coming through. Now, one of the things that looks to have happened in that previous period is people could not set schedule an auto pay.
This one here, of not scheduling an auto pay. That's obviously a problem and it seems like a very basic feature, but that seems to have disappeared for people. Obviously a major issue there which seems to have been rectified in the current period. Also, there's some payment options that are accessible for people.
There's other things in here, that people try to click bill pay, they get a blank screen. Various bugs and crashes across the board have been fixed for the Bank of America. One of the things I'd like to have a look at now is, we saw the scores previously for this SURF area.
We saw Bank of America in March. Now we're just looking at March in total and we can see that in total, all these SURF problems, their pain points, averaging around, it’s just under 15. About 13 in total, but the leader is Citibank and they're averaging around 7 month-on-month and the consistency of Citibank where they don't have issues across these periods and they’re consistently sitting below 10 in total for all of these issue topics. That's what keeps them at the top. At 4.6 across time they're one of the most dominant brands in the market. The effort they've got to make that work is really, really solid. We can see there, I suppose Wells Fargo is obvious, they’ve had some recent problems, but again, in the past, they had numbers like we see for the rest of the banks. They just need to get that back down again in a reasonably quick time. We can see there why Chase is sitting there at 4th place in this competitive set in particular here. One of the things I'd like to have a quick look at is, this is overall, but let's have a look at what it looks like for iOS let's have a look here.
We saw now that the naming has changed slightly, but on the right there is where Bank of America sits, our focus. We can see that iOS is not performing as well as Android is. Although it's a small part of the market I think they need to focus there as well to pick up those problems sitting there and they can get that incremental increase. We can see here, even Citibank is leading very solidly on iOS as well
Overall, a really solid improvement for Bank of America. I think they've still got room to improve compared to say Citibank and iOS, for example, but very solid improvement.
08:25 Glenn: That's some really powerful insights there about Bank of America and especially those ones around Citibank around how they are just so consistent month-on-month in issue resolution and just having that high performing app. I would like to think that Wells Fargo is going to keep on the rise and keep on making those incremental improvements to get back to where they were, but that's where it’s standing for March 2022.
With those National Banks, we are going to have additional sessions over the coming days, looking at Regional and Tier 1 Banks in the US and if you'd like an individual session to have a look at your bank and how you're performing, you're more than welcome to reach out, and we're more than happy to take some time to have a chat.
Thanks again Tony, looking forward to another session tomorrow, and be well everybody.