The annual customer experience report from service design consultancy Engine has revealed that since 2014, there has been a 29% rise in customers selecting banking as the best sector for customer service and experience.

‘The Customer Experience Report 2018’ ranked Lloyds Bank as the second-best brand for customer experience behind Amazon, but ahead of Santander (joint seventh), Barclays (joint seventh), Nationwide (joint seventh) and Halifax (10^th).

Just 15% of respondents said they wanted companies to focus on innovations such as voice assistants, while only 17% wanted businesses to use their data to create personalised recommendations.

Instead, 62% of respondents said that businesses should focus on launching simpler, flexible and more affordable customer service options.

“Over the last year, the rise of really well-designed banking apps has made the more established financial institutions step up their customer experience game,” said Joe Heapy, co-founder of Engine.

“A long-term investment in digital capabilities across the sector means that banking is now consistently ranked as one of the top five sectors for service and experience.

“However, banks need to prioritise future investment in customer service infrastructure carefully.

“Only 22% of respondents say that they want automation.

“Customers certainly do not want automation at the expense of help from a person when it’s needed, and so the challenge is to prove that it can drive the three things that customers constantly tell us they really want: transparency, efficiency and reliability.”

In the last five years that the annual survey has been conducted, the ranking of what is most important to customers has remained unchanged: openness and honesty (50%), efficiency (48%) and reliability (43%).