August 2022 US Market Tier 1 Banks App Performance Snapshot

This month in the US Tier 1 banking category we turn our attention to PNC to find out what is dragging their Engaged Customer Score down.

Somebody turn the lights on because PNC are in the dark

Over the past year the Engaged Customer Score (ECS) data shows that PNC have a problem with inconsistency. These problems are preventing them from closing the gap with Capital One and if they don’t get on top of the issues, they are in danger of being overtaken by Truist, who are making a good comeback after a merger-related rough patch.

To understand what the issues affecting PNC’s ECS rankings and what should be prioritised to turn things around, Tony takes us first to the SURF analysis which tells us how well the app is performing the 4 fundamental areas for an app, these being Security, Usability, Reliability and Functionality.

Using Capital One as a point of comparison, we see just how big a gap exists between the two banks' app performance, and which areas PNC needs to address to close that gap. Next, Tony directs our focus to the Functionality pillar for a closer look at the detail and applies a filter to capture only the negative ECS feedback to find out what some of the problems customers are experiencing within the Functionality category are.

It appears that the customer messaging is not getting through to PNC as we can see that the issues affecting several aspects of core customer journeys have been going unnoticed and unaddressed for quite some time.

With no improvements in sight and issues of basic functionality proving to be very frustrating for their customers. This month’s snapshot demonstrates how important it is to use customer feedback to gain an understanding around issues.

Let’s hope PNC catches on soon to address their issues. In the meantime, their customers must sit and wait.

U.S. Tier One banks Engaged Customer Score (ECS) performance rankings for August 2022

Would you like to enlighten yourself with a personalised look at your bank's app performance? Contact Touchpoint Group today for a specific insights session for your business.

Full Transcript

00:00:01 – Glenn: Hello everybody, Glenn Marvin here from Touchpointgroup.com and welcome back to another Banking App Insight Session. This one focusing on the US Tier 1 Banks and we're going to dig into PNC this month. Where we're going to look at one of the fundamental features that's actually dragging their Engaged Customer Score down and really should be prioritized to improve the User Experience. That, and just a quick look at Truist, Tony Patrick, who sort of coming back into the trust frame. Really, those trust signals are coming back strong, aren't they?

00:00:43 – Tony: They definitely are. Thank you, Glenn. Yes, so today as Glenn mentioned just covering off US Tier 1 which we have U.S Bank, Capital One, PNC and Truist. So I will jump straight in and look at our Standard View to kick things off. Which is looking at this view here, which is our Engaged Customer Score.

Now, for that there's a few of you who are familiar but for those who aren't, the Engaged Customer Score is looking at those customers who've given both a score and a comment. So those people, when we look at it that way we actually remove those disengaged customers and we actually see real movement in the data. And so we actually see up and downs that represent real problems with your App, rather than having things that are flattened out and I suppose, vanilla into some extent, that just go across time and don't change. So we can see real change as it happens down to the day if we need to.

But one of the things I can see here is that obviously, Truist with the merger of SunTrust and BB&T obviously had some problems. You're obviously, you're taking two different Banking Customer groups, joining them into a new entity and it gradually, across time has actually improved. So we're sitting at the end of last year at around just above 2 towards 3, there was a bit of a spike there. But the gradual Improvement we can see for Truist is very positive for them so they're actually coming back into the realm of others. And while they haven't yet overtaken PNC, by the looks of it they probably will next month because it's very close at this point. So, well done to Truist in get gain that trust of that two customer groups coming into that one brand.

But now, I want to focus on PNC because it's one brand that should be doing very well but it has this inconsistency problem, where we can see there in October 2021 there was a bit of a dip. We also saw in March has a bit of a dip as well. But, even if that dip wasn't there, the consistency like even then it's still sitting below the likes of Capital One sitting just above it. And the Gap would be consistent at around, you know, a 0.4, 0.5 somewhere there. At the moment currently, PNC is at 3.7 and Capital One is 4.3 so a 0.6 Gap there for them to close.

But, let's have a look though at what might be going on with them and how they can actually improve. So, one of the first views we'd like to look at, is the frequency of these problems across what we call our SURF Analysis. So, what this looks at is around Security and Authentication, Usability, Reliability and Functionality that covers our SURF, our four pillars of SURF. And because these are pain points, they're problems, you want to keep these scores, the frequency of this, down to a minimum. And we can see there that Capital One is doing that to some extent in some of these areas like Security, Authentication only 1.6 of customers across Q2 actually mentioned something about an issue with Authentication, whereas for PNC it was around 5.8%

But what I want to focus on today is this sort of features area. So it's 2.8% compared to 8 so this is the highest one we've got for PNC this sort of Features and Functionality. And so that seems to be an issue that's coming through for PNC. Now, one of the things we can look at here is what's the impact on the score of these particular topics? So we can see the frequency of those scores, but how much is it influencing the score across that quarter?

So I can look at this measure called Contribution. And what I can see here is that this Features and Functionality area for PNC is dragging their score back by about 0.2, so in reality, if their score is sitting at 3.7 at the moment if they fix this or at least got it to the level that we have of Capital One it could go up by about 0.2, they could get up to about 3.9 just on this area alone. Now, I'm not going to focus on every other area here but again they can also gain incremental value by looking at these other areas as well.

But today we'll focus on this Features and Functionality area because that's really interesting about what we actually do to improve what's happening there. So let me jump in to have a look at the detail underneath that. So, what do we talk about in there?

So, here we're looking at- I'm just focusing now on topics. So these are topics around Checking Your Account Balance, Depositing a Check. So these aren't negative or positive I've just jumped into these topics in their own right. How we can see though how they are performing is look at the score. So for example, the very first one is a very basic functionality of a Mobile App, which is probably the very first thing you want to be doing, is Checking Your Account Balance. And the score, when people talk about that- when Capital One customers talk about that, the average score is 3.9 When PNC customers talk about this, the average score is 2.1 so clearly a gap there and a big problem. The other one where the big gap is Monitoring Account Activity. Obviously the first one about Checking Your Account Balances and Monitoring Account Activity are connected and we get similar scores there. So, for Capital One customers, this isn't really causing a major issue for them. Actually, it's reasonably good from that perspective. But PNC, it's an issue.

Let's jump in and have a look though, what types of issues are PNC customers having? Let's go in for this very, very basic Functionality. What I'll do, I'll focus this. Because this topic here about Checking Account Balance is it's just a broad topic, it doesn't look at anything negative or positive. What I can do though, is actually look at those who are having an issue because clearly some are if the average score is 2.1

So this very first person for example who is using 4.27 of the Android app for PNC. In there, they're saying they can check- they can see their Balance but they can't get to see Withdrawals, that's a problem. "Always says issues, never shows accurate balances". This person here, "The app is usually down or the balance is unavailable at all times of the day". Obviously, a clearly frustrated customer for something that should be a very core Functionality of a Mobile App for Banking. And even this person here, they can't keep track of their active balances and even here, they want to actually see an up-to-date balance which they can't seem to get with PNC. So, clearly issues going on there with PNC.

But, let's have a look at one layer deeper on that and just have a look at how this has trended across time. So, what I can have a look at here is, this is looking at this Checking Account Balance Via the App and what the score has been across time. So if we look back into... up until August last year, we can see the average score was sitting at 3 or above. So very nice, it's sort of going along, there's some issues for customers but not a major one. When we hit though September of last year, September 2021, we start to go below 3 and it has not gone above 3 since then. And in fact, it's only gone above 2.5 a couple of times: In general, it's sitting below 2 so, clearly problems across time that haven't been addressed for the past year. If we compare that, so having you mind this, above 3 is probably a nice level.

Let's have a look at what this same one looks like. I'll just look at this 4. The comparison here of Capital One is what have they been doing? So what we can see with them is that even the lower score is sitting at about 3.5. So even when the customers are the unhappiest, it's probably this it's probably the highest it's ever been for PNC. So clearly, Capital One had this under control but PNC has an issue that they haven't addressed over the past year for such a basic functionality so something clear for them to focus on right away.

00:08:56 – Glenn: Absolutely, Tony. And something that any Product Manager who should and would be looking at if they had that data in front of them so thanks for that.

If you want to have a look in a little more depth in your Banking App's performance, feel free to sing out and we will see you next month with a whole bunch more Insights. Have a great day!