July 2022 US Market Tier 1 Banks App Performance Snapshot

This month we are looking at two of the top performers in the Tier 1 market - US Bank and Capital One, and what specifically can be done to close what is quite a narrow gap between the two. Join us as we investigate what it takes to be the best.

Little things make a big difference at the top and US Bank has set the bar high. Has Capital One got what it takes to become a global leader?

This month’s snapshot for US Tier 1 banks is a competitive one, where we find out what it takes to be the best. US Bank has held a steady position in the number one spot consistently for some time, just ahead of Capital One. We’ve seen a widening in this gap more recently due to a slight drop by Capital One, but overall, this is a consistent gap and one that will offer us some very interesting insights as we explore what is going on here at the top of the board.

We begin with a comparison of the two banks' Engaged Customer Scores (ECS), on a scale of 1-5, with 5 being the best. It is here where we see why the US Bank is in such a dominant position. With far fewer customers giving low number scores and a rather significant portion of their customers giving them a 5 score – in fact, this is where we see quite clearly why US Bank is a global leader, having one of the highest 5-score percentages that is well over the 80% benchmark for top performers globally, at 89.2%.

In comparison to US Bank’s excellent results, Capital One is performing lower than we would expect to see at just 73.3% for the 5-scores, and a greater number in the lower scores with a great big 10.4% for their 1-scores, indicating they are having some problems and certainly will have plenty of room for improvement.

To understand why, Tony takes us to the apps Foundational Attributes where we don’t see much of a difference between the two, so we move on to look at the ’Core Journeys‘, which covers all of the typical things a customer needs to do whilst using the app and this is where things start to get interesting. Tony identifies two very clear areas that are contributing to the lower customer scores for Capital One and as we delve deeper to get a better understanding of what the issues are, almost immediately we are hit with a smattering of red – indicating low scores and some frustrating customer experiences.

What then, can Capital One do to catch up? Tony identifies the three biggest areas that Capital One can focus on to make the most improvements on their ECS and see them close that gap between US Bank.

This month’s snapshot demonstrates how any bank, business or organisation can use customer feedback to identify and prioritise the key things that they need to do to make the biggest difference. We would love to see Capital One take this intel on board and become one of the global leaders.

Engaged Customer Score Rankings as at July 2022

Getting there is just a phone call away - If you would like a personalised look at your bank's app performance? Contact Touchpoint Group today for a specific insights session for your business.

Full Transcript

00:00:00 Glenn: Welcome back to another Touchpoint Group Video Insights Session in the Banking App world and we are looking at the US Tier 1 Banks and in particular this month we're going to focus on US Bank and Capital One. And US Bank are consistently at the top of the tree just ahead of Capital One and when it comes down to it, when we look at it, it's amazing how you can use customer feedback to identify those one or two things that can be the difference between first or second in regards to that experience they're having. Tony Patrick, welcome. We're going to look at those two Core Journeys in particular after we've got through some of it and I'm going to hand it over to you my friend, because it's amazing how these little things make such a big difference.

00:00:49 Tony: Brilliant. Thanks Glenn. And as Glenn mentioned, today we're looking at US Tier 1 Banks and that covers off US Bank, Capital One PNC and Truist. So, what I'll do is just jump straight in and have a look at how they're progressing in terms of their Engaged Customer Score. Now, you might recall those who've watched this series before is the Engaged Customer Score covers off those customers who've given both a comment and a score and for us that really shows us what's happening in the market. So, when an issue happens with your app, you'll clearly see it in this information here, in this these charts.

Now, one of the things just at the bottom here just to have a look at what else is going on, we can see Truist at the bottom obviously the combination of SunTrust and BB&T and that's taken a while for the customers to get back to normal and have that app get back to a normal space. And it's doing pretty well, it's actually getting back towards 3.5 with a consistent movement up which is great.

One of the things I want to look at, as Glenn mentioned, was looking at that gap between one of the leaders globally which is US Bank, and they're sitting at around about well above 4.5 consistently and second place here which is Capital One and that gap is consistent across time in fact, over the past six months or so, that gap has widened mainly because of a slight drop-off from Capital One. Let's look at actually what we can see is how to close that gap because, it's a bit like there's two sides of the coin. So, I suppose why is US Bank doing so well and what can Capital One do to close that gap. It's the same thing essentially. Let's jump in and have a look at what's going on.

So, first of all, just a brief look at the scoring. This customers here are scoring each of these Banks out of 5 and then obviously giving comments attached to that. One of the things that's interesting here though, if I look at Capital One 10.4% of the customers giving comments over the past quarter giving a 1. So you might think: -Well is that high or low? But, of course you look just below that and you can see only US bank is only getting 2.6% and that's a fairly big gap. You're getting 8% more customers giving Capital One. We've seen in others the score of 5 if you hit +80% you're doing well and this is why US Bank is a leader. They're getting 89% giving a 5, and that's a fairly a big difference between that and Capital One. That it's good to understand why, what's underneath the hardest and why that's happening. Let's jump in further.

What we're looking at here over the past quarter is the score across three very broad categories these Foundational Attributes. Things like: Speed and Logging in and, is the App Functioning as Expected. So, these foundational attributes are very important. It's a gateway to get into the product. Now you can see there it's actually fairly close at 4.8 and 4.4. That's a reasonably good area so, obviously, there's some improvements there for Capital One. If we go along though to the next one though which is looking at Core Journeys, we've got a gap about 4.5 down to 3.2. So, I think there's something in there that we need to look at because those Journeys are very important for customers to actually do all the things they're trying to do in the app. What I will do, I'll have a look inside that Core Journeys and break that apart into a bit more detail. Now, I'll close off this right panel for the moment because we'll look at that in a second because that's important.

Looking across these Journeys are the most, some of the most important ones for customers. These are the main purpose of actually using these apps. Now, there's clearly two things there that aren't like the others. One of those is Depositing Check by the App and there's a massive gap between the scores the Capital One customers are giving compared to US Bank. Another one is Making P2P Payments. A 2.4 average score for Capital One and a 4.3 for US bank. Clearly there's two areas of improvement for Capital One definitely in here. Let's have a look at what sort of comments we're getting through in this area of making P2P payments for Capital One. I'll select that and let's have a look on the right panel when that comes up.

What we can see there I'll make this a bit wider so, what I can see very quickly is I can see a lot of red in there. That's just a quick view that means that these are people giving a 1 or 2 out of 5. Threes are in blue and any fours and fives are sitting in that green area but, pretty quickly I can see there's some Zelle payment problems. That's probably pretty much a lot of the problems that are going on and so, that's interesting. Let's compare that though side by side or just directly here jumping into what US Bank customers are actually saying.

Very quickly you get a feel there's less of that red there are some of that going on but, in general, you've got these fours and fives a couple of threes and a 1 is very rare, every now and then you get something going on. But, you can see that the Zelle payment integration is working very well for US Bank compared to Capital One.

Let's have a look though at depositing checks. So again, there's a simple gap, massive gap between the two. Let's have a look at Depositing Checks. If I look at it here, for Capital One again, we can see a scattering of problems here with these ones, "the mobile deposit sucks... It's hard to cash the checks it's there's issues with that check deposit process in general Impossible to deposit the check with this app..." So again, that you can just imagine the scattering of colours there.

Let's compare that directly with the experience that US Bank customers are having. So, pretty much it's all green and 5 every now and then we get some issues coming through but pretty much it's all this 5 area. You can see there, this is where Capital One is falling down and getting all those ones we saw previously. What I want to do is just to cover off the end of this, is have a look at that other key area which is that the area of that whole foundational piece. So, things like Usability, Speed and Security and Reliability. Those big areas.

Now, one of the things I can see here now... what I’ll do actually, I might look at this for the past quarter. We've got a a nice perspective on this that's more recent and apply that because that's where the biggest gap has been over the past six months between those two Banks. Now, what I can see here is actually Capital One is doing pretty well on Usability and Speed and so on but, the biggest gap here I can see is Reliability. You can see the gap is there is 2.6 to 3.9 just a brief look at the types of issues that are coming through for Capital One on Reliability and what we end up seeing in here things like those errors it doesn't log in for some people it's Dependable but, there's it's you know, the app is going down, for example.

Similarly, we'll see things that are coming through that are very positive for US Bank. But, in summary what I can show you is essentially here are the biggest three things where US Bank can actually close that gap to Capital One -sorry, Capital One can close the bank the gap to you to get to US Bank. Depositing Checks by the App as we saw Making P2P Payments and that reliability issue then they can become that Global leader like we're seeing US Bank is.

00:08:23 Glenn: Thank you Mr Tony Patrick and isn't it amazing how when you actually listen to your customers and you see what they're saying out there you can use their customer feedback and that customer sentiment to identify and prioritize those core things that you can get done to make the big difference.

That's it for another month, folks. If you want to talk to us about looking deeper into your bank and your banking app and what you can do to make improvements there, we're the people to do it. Sing out, and we'll have a chat.

Have a great day.