The latest results from YouGov reveal that building society customers receive better customer service compared to customers of banks and other providers. In July nearly 9 in 10 (89%) of building society customers say their provider offers good customer service. This is unchanged from the results in January 2019. Just 80% of customers of banks and other providers said they received good customer service, down from 82% in January.

Building societies have consistently scored highly across the seven metrics of service measured, and have outperformed their competitors since the survey began in July 2016.

Feeling that your business is valuable to your provider

The measure where building societies have the largest lead over other providers is in making customers feel that their business is valuable to them. 70% of building society customers said their provider makes them feel that their business is valued, whereas just half (50%) of bank customers feel this – the lowest on record since this survey started in July 2016.

Building societies are owned by their members, and so to some extent it would be expected that building societies would value the business of their owners. Shareholder owned banks and other providers do not have the same relationship with their customers and so it would appear they struggle to make their customers feel valued.

Recommend to friend or family

Another metric building societies perform particularly well at is the likelihood for their customers to recommend them to friends or family. This is often considered as the gold standard of measuring customer satisfaction. 84% of building society customers said they would recommend them to a friend or family, compared to just 68% of bank customers, a 15 percentage point difference. This is also the lowest score for banks since the survey began in July 2016.

All figures, unless otherwise stated, are from YouGov Plc.  Total sample size was 2072 adults. Fieldwork was undertaken between 5th - 7th July 2019.  The survey was carried out online. The figures have been weighted and are representative of all GB adults (aged 18+).