Reports: Best Banks for Customer Satisfaction

Team Clark’s favorite online banks charge no fees on checking accounts, pay decent interest on your savings account and never rip you off. But which financial institutions are doing the best job delivering solid customer service?

Support, Account Offerings and More: How Does Your Bank Rank?

Banking with a financial institution that offers good customer service is great when you need help with a particular issue or just some personal attention to your accounts. To measure customer satisfaction, we looked at rankings from both the American Consumer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) and J.D. Power.

• ACSI
• J.D. Power

The contrast between the two studies is worth noting: ACSI shows a small uptick in customer satisfaction with banks overall, while J.D. Power says customers are losing confidence in big financial institutions.

Banking Satisfaction: ACSI

ACSI’s Finance Study 2021-2022 is based on interviews with 13,546 customers contacted via email between October 2021 and September 2022.

National banks and what ACSI calls “super-regional” financial institutions have improved slightly in customer satisfaction. Banks in both categories posted gains for benchmarks such as bank teller helpfulness, staff courtesy and the number of branches and ATMs.

Here are some key findings from the report, which grades banks on a 100-scale:

• Among national banks, Citibank scored a 78, which represents just a 1-point gain compared to the previous year’s standings, but that was enough for it to break its tie with Chase and take first place.
• Capital One continued its dominance among super-regional banks, posting a four-point gain for a score of 81.
• Making its debut on the list, Bank of the West scored a 74, and Truist, the bank that emerged form the SunTrust-BB&T merger, lost 3 points this year for a score of 73.

Let’s take a look at the top national banks first, and then we’ll move on to the super-regional banks.

Best National Banks According to Customers

Best Super-Regional Banks According to Customers

Read the full Finance Study 2021-2022 from ACSI.

Banking Satisfaction: J.D. Power

J.D. Power’s 2022 U.S. Retail Banking Satisfaction Study indicates that many financial institutions are losing ground with customers when it comes to delivering on expectations.

Here are some key findings from J.D. Power:

• Customer retention is tied to bank support: Overall customer satisfaction goes up 155 points when people feel that their bank supports them during tough economic times, but only 44% of financial institutions are living up to this promise, the report says. 68% of customers say they will stick with their banks if they feel supported.
• Banks aren’t helping us save time or money: “Satisfaction scores are lowest for helping retail bank customers save time or money, which has become a key priority for them,” the report says.
• Most customers don’t know enough about overdrafts: 61% of customers surveyed said they’re in the dark about their banks’ overdraft policies including whether any changes have been made to those policies.

To produce this report, J.D. Power says it collected responses from more than 101,000 bank customers between April 2021 and January 2022. 

The study uses seven metrics to gauge customer satisfaction: trust; people; account offerings; allowing customers to bank how and when they want; saving time and money; digital channels; and resolving problems or complaints.

The report analyzes customer satisfaction with banks in 15 geographic regions around the United States. Below are the top banks in each region based on their scores, on a 1,000-point scale.

Read more on the report from J.D. Power.

Clark is not a fan of the big banks. Not only does he think you can get better savings rates elsewhere, but his advice is to put your money somewhere that won’t, in his words, “‘fee’ you to death.”

“Many big banks seem to pride themselves on what I call ‘customer no service.’ It’s not a question of if — but when — you’ll get ripped off by your big bank,” Clark says.