According to Forrester’s 2022 Malaysian Banking Customer Experience Index (CX Index™) rankings, the average CX Index score of Malaysian banks improved significantly, from 62.7 to 65.7 on a 100-point scale. However, all brands are still stuck in the OK category. In this second annual evaluation, most banks’ CX Index scores inched forward and the rankings shuffled compared with 2021.

Key findings of this year’s CX Index include:

  • Only two banks made significant progress. Only two banks — Public Bank and Hong Leong Bank — meaningfully improved their scores over last year (see Figure 3). Public Bank made the biggest splash, gaining 6.2 points. This moved it from fourth place last year to the top of the table this year, narrowly displacing 2021 leader Maybank. Hong Leong Bank also made significant progress, improving its score by 4.2 points and moving from fifth place to fourth place in 2022. Four other banks saw positive but statistically insignificant score changes that caused three banks’ overall rankings to change.
  • Banking CX improved but remains mired in mediocrity. The aggregate CX score for banks in Malaysia was up significantly by 2.9 points this year. The number of individual respondents who had excellent experiences was also up, by 7 percentage points. Despite this progress, the average score of 65.7 was still in the OK category, similar to their CX performance last year. Overall, banks made incremental improvements in the CX drivers related to customer respect, branches, and banking services. In 2022, banks also made their interactions slightly easier and more effective. Banks like Public Bank and Maybank are already on the cusp of offering good CX; the overall positive trend gives banks the opportunity to build on their progress and offer better CX.
  • Public Bank zoomed to the top. In 2022, Public Bank outperformed its peers, jumping 6.3 points to the top of the CX table for banks in Malaysia. While it made its interactions easier and more effective, its emotion score jumped by a massive 15 percentage points. It also pushed the number of emotionally positive interactions for each negative interaction from nine to an industry-leading 21. Public Bank also increased its “website and mobile app” score — the most important driver category for banking CX in 2022 — by 13 percentage points.

Based on a survey of more than 2,000 consumers in Malaysia, Forrester’s CX Index benchmarks the CX quality of seven multichannel banks — AmBank, Bank Rakyat, CIMB Bank, Hong Leong Bank, Maybank, Public Bank, and RHB Bank — across three key dimensions: emotion, effectiveness, and ease of use.

The rankings identify the key drivers that have the greatest impact on brand loyalty. By focusing on the drivers that most influence customers’ loyalty, banks can prioritize their efforts accordingly. The top drivers for customer loyalty are making customers feel confident, happy, valued, respected, and delighted. Among customers of Malaysia’s banking industry who felt confident, 79% plan to spend more with the brand and 74% will advocate for it.

Making financial services customers feel disappointed, neglected, frustrated, annoyed, and unappreciated are the five emotions that most harm loyalty. Typically, customers are disappointed when brands cannot fulfill their promises or meet customer expectations. Of Malaysia’s banking customers who feel disappointed, just 7% plan to spend more with the brand and only 9% will advocate for it.

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