March 2024 US Banking App Rankings and Insights Session

Executive Summary:

In our latest Touchpoint Group Banking App Insights Session we delve into the intricate dynamics of the US banking app market, dissecting key trends and shedding light on performance metrics across various financial institutions. Led by Yazad Karkaria, our Global Head of AI Analytics and CX Strategy, we navigated through a landscape defined by customer sentiment and technical performance metrics.

Our analysis centers on the evaluation of approximately 40 banks and financial entities in the US. Rather than relying on conjecture our methodology hinges on the tangible feedback customers provide on platforms such as the App Store and Google Play. By scrutinizing reviews accompanied by comments we discern insights from engaged customers, unraveling the reasons behind their satisfaction or discontent with banking apps.

Spotlight on Leading Banks

Five leading banks in the US market were at the forefront of our scrutiny. US Bank emerged as the consistent leader, maintaining its dominance since January 2023, with none of its counterparts achieving comparable ratings. Citibank followed closely, narrowing the gap with US Bank in recent months. However, Bank of America experienced a gradual decline in performance, evidenced by a drop in the engaged customer score from 4.4 in January to 4.1 in March. Similarly, Capital One witnessed a sustained decline, while PNC exhibited fluctuating performance, plummeting to its lowest point in March 2024.

Diagnosing PNC's Decline

Shifting the spotlight to the PNC banking app, where we look at the underlying factors contributing to its performance downturn. Leveraging our proprietary analytics platform, Ipiphany, we employ a foundational pillars framework to deconstruct PNC's user experience. This framework, consisting of Security & Authentication, Design and UI, Reliability and Stability, and Features & Functionality, serves as a compass, guiding us through the intricacies of banking app performance.

Identifying Pain Points

Our analysis uncovered a surge in technical issues plaguing PNC's app in recent months, with the incidence of app bugs, crashes, and freezes witnessing a significant increase. Moreover, login errors and issues pertaining to the "Move Money" feature emerged as prominent pain points indicative of deteriorating user experience. A granular examination of customer feedback unearthed dissatisfaction among users, with some contemplating switching banks—a red flag necessitating immediate attention.

Implementing Corrective Measures

Despite the challenges, there is cause for optimism, as PNC appears to have swiftly responded to mitigate the crisis in their latest app release. PNC has initiated some corrective measures, swiftly releasing updates to address prevalent issues. Our analysis of app versions showcased an improvement in user sentiment, with the latest iterations garnering positive reviews and high ratings. This proactive approach underscores PNC's commitment to enhancing user experience, and fostering customer loyalty.

Charting the Path Forward

In banking app ecosystems, informed decision-making is paramount. Through our rigorous analysis and comprehensive insights we equip financial institutions with the tools to navigate challenges, capitalize on opportunities, and redefine future strategies.

Our examination of the US banking app market underscores the importance of data-driven insights in shaping strategic decisions. By embracing analytics and prioritizing user experience financial institutions can navigate turbulent waters, ensuring sustainable growth and customer satisfaction in an increasingly competitive landscape.

Feel free to contact us for a free deep dive session specifically looking at your banking app data as well as benchmarking against a chosen competitor.

Video Transcript

00:00:05 - Glenn: Hello, everybody, and welcome back to another Touchpoint Group Banking App Insights Session. We are looking at the US market for the month of March 2024. With me as usual now, I have Yazad Karkaria, our Global Head of AI Analytics and CX Strategy. And Yazad, what are you going to take us through today when it comes to the US market?

00:00:29 - Yazad: Sure. Thanks, Glenn. We are reviewing the performance of about 40 banks and financial institutions operating in the US and the way we are measuring their performance is by analyzing the online reviews given by customers on App Store and Google Play.

For the purpose of our analysis, what we do is we take those reviews which also have a comment attached to it, because the customers who leave a review, along with the comment, we call them engaged customers, and the comments that they share help us understand why they are happy or unhappy with a certain banking app.

On my screen right now, I have five leading banks from the US market. The first one that we are looking at is the US Bank, and they are consistently leading, as we can see, since Jan 2023. None of the other banks right now on the screen have been able to touch upon the ratings that they have achieved. 

The next one that we have is Citi. So Citi is a close second, as we can see over here, and interestingly, in the last few months, the gap between Citi and US Bank is closing. That will be interesting to track and see what happens over there on that front.

The next one we're looking at is Bank of America. So they've consistently performed in the range between 4.2 and 4.4. But over the last couple of months, there has been a gradual decline in their performance. As we can see, it's dropped from about 4.4 in Jan to about 4.1 in March.

The next one we are looking at is Capital One. We covered this in detail, in fact, in our previous monthly session, and here we can see that their performance still continues to decline gradually, even in March.

However, the bank that we'll be looking at today is PNC. PNC's performance fluctuated quite a bit in the first half of 2023. They had a recovery period from July to September last year, and then, in fact, from September to December, their Engaged Customer Score was quite stable at over 4. As we can see over here, this particular time period. Then, what we see in 2024 is their performance starts slipping, and in March, it has reached the lowest point at which it was in the last 15 months.

00:02:44 - Glenn: So, what is it that's happened to the PNC User Experience after such a stable run?

00:02:52 - Yazad: Yes, Glenn. What we'll do to understand this question better is we will look at our foundational pillars framework that we have built in our analytics platform Ipiphany, and this will help us understand actually what's going on with PNC over the last few months and what is it that's impacted user experience.

Here on my screen, you can see we have identified four core pillars based on the millions of reviews that we have analysed across more than 100 banks globally. We have understood that if any banking app has to perform well and be successful with users, it needs to really do well on these four pillars. So that starts with, of course, Authentication, Design and UI of the app, the app's Reliability and Stability, and the variety of Features and Functionality that the app offers.

Now, mind you, Glenn, in the framework that we have, we have a lot of detailed subtopics within each of these pillars to analyze, because these pillars are really good to look at the results at an overall level, but we have a lot of detail which actually tells our clients where exactly the changes are taking place. 

We will now be using this framework to understand and see what's happening with PNC. On my screen right now, at the bottom, we have different components of the foundational pillars that I took you through, and we are looking at these results since the peak of October 2023 until March 2024.

Remember, Glenn, that their performance was really strong from September to December, and here, when we look at these pain points, we can see that the overall incidence of pain points right from October to December on the screen is in a lower range compared to January, February and then March, the incidence of pain points has increased to a different level.

Now, let's take a quick look at these pain points one by one and see what's happened. Technical issues have quite sharply increased. They were about 13-14% in the last quarter of 2023. But now, in the first quarter of 2024, we can see that it's increased to about 19-20% in January and to 34% in March over here. So, this is quite sharp.

On the other hand, we also look at a related topic, which is App Bugs, Crashes and Freezes. From an incidence of about 4% issues faced by customers, it's almost increased thrice in the month of March, we have about 13% customers reporting app bugs and crashes. Similarly, Login Error-related issue has also increased almost twice in this time period, as we can see about three times, and then, another interesting one is about App Move Money feature as well.

Earlier, this feature was hardly surfacing with about 2% incidence, but it's doubled in March, as we can see. Now, to just get a better understanding of what's going on with some of these, what I can do is I can just click on App Bugs and Crashes to see what are the key themes coming up over here, and, it's really interesting.

Some of the topics that we would normally expect, like the app has been down, you need to fix your app, etc. A very interesting topic has come up over here, which is also talking about customers intending to switch banks. And let's take a look at what's going on here.

So here, we are looking at a few comments from customers who have faced issues with App Bugs, Crashes and Freezes, and they are expressing their dissatisfaction and indicating that they are likely to switch banks because they are not happy with this particular area of bugs, crashes and freezes. This is some really critical piece of information because it's an indicator of customer attrition, which sure, any bank would like to track and understand in detail.

Another interesting one is Move Money Features. Let's just take a quick look and see what's happening over there. Here, customers are talking about issues they are facing while paying bills, sending money, using Zelle, and also there's an interesting one, which is external accounts. Let's take a look at this and see. So, here we have a few customers who are talking about not being able to make payments through external accounts, which has emerged as a pain point among these users over here. So that's interesting, and we've been able to just identify this in a few seconds by just making a few clicks on our platform over here.

These are some of the latest developments which have taken place, Glenn, which are resulting in user experience to decline over the last few months.

00:07:22 - Glenn: Yes, it's not a great look for PNC customers, and, is there any way that we can see, because it's now... We're in April and this is taking us up to March. Is there any way that we can see if PNC are doing anything about it and the impact that those changes may have had in such a short timeframe since the end of March?

0:07:44 - Yazad: Sure, Glenn, that's really an important question. In fact, there is some good news on that front. Yes, PNC has taken action, and the results are very much visible as well, and using the analytics framework that we have, we can actually go ahead and measure those results too.

Let me take a moment and explain to you what's happening on this particular screen. On my left hand side over here, I have a recent list of Android versions which have been released. The most recent one is up over here. So, it's in sorted and descending order. Here we are again looking at the results for the last six months.

In these cells, which are highlighted in blue, as you can see, we have the number of reviews that we have received in each of these months.

The cells which are blue, indicate which particular version was dominant during which of these time periods. Starting with version 4.4 over here, if I hover my mouse over this. About 500 customers gave us reviews in October for this version, and the average score, as you can see in the pop-up, is 4.3, which is quite good. It's high up in that range. The next one which was launched was 4.41, and even with this one, the score is in a higher range. It's about 4.1. Now, let's look at the next major version, which was released, which is 4.43. Now, in December, this version was doing quite well, has a rating of about 4.2. In the month of January, dropped to 3.9, then it dropped to 3.8, and in the month of March, it dropped very sharply to 2.9. So, this definitely would tell you that something needs to be done quite quickly over here to reverse this situation. 

If I just click on this, I can see the main themes going on with version 4.43 in the month of March, customers complaining of the 'app not working well, not able to log in, it's the worst app' and things like that. However, with the new version, which is 4.5, which was released, about 90 customers use this version, and you will, in an instance, see the change in tone of feedback that's coming through.

Here more customers are talking about the 'app being easy to use, being more friendly, etc'. The latest version that we have until 31 March, which is your 4.45.1, we have about 100 reviews, and you see a lot of positive comments coming through. If you look at their scores, the average is 4.3 and 4.4, which is very similar to the kind of scores that we saw in the last quarter of 2023.

What we'll do, Glenn, is right now we've just taken a quick overview of the customer sentiment coming through these dynamic word clouds, but I'm actually going to show you now how you can go ahead and quantify this feedback and conclude what changes have taken place.

On this screen now, these different colours over here represent the different app versions. We are starting with 4.42, which is the version which was dominant in the last quarter of 2023 and it's done quite well. The average customer rating is 4.2. Then version 4.43 was launched and the score for this version is 3.7, which is lower than 4.42.

And then subsequently we had these new recent versions which were launched in March, which have a higher score. Now, to understand why these scores have been moving the way they have, we will again go back to our foundational pillars analysis and look at the pain points.

During the last quarter of 2023, 4.42 performed relatively well and only 12% of the customers have reported technical issues, as we can see here. Then, when customers started using 4.43, that almost doubled. Technical issues almost doubled to 21, and App Login related issues also increased, as we can see over here and more customers also started reporting App Bugs, Crashes and Freezes. Earlier it was less than 5, but it's now increased to about 8. Then with the launch of version 4.45 in March, we can straightaway see an improvement in Technical Issues here and App Login Related Issues as well.

The incidence of pain points has dropped sharply, and to add to this, when the most recent version was released, even the incidents of Bugs, Crashes and Freezes have gone down to a very low point. In fact, it's done even better than 4.42. as we can see over here, it's only 2% compared to about 5% that we saw earlier. We can actually see, Glenn, what is it that's led to this improvement in the performance? And we are hopeful that with PNC continuing this strong performance, their score will bounce back quite quickly in April when we analyse the results.

00:12:21 - Glenn: That's some pretty compelling evidence in and around the analytics to tell that story of both the decline of experience in the app, but also the recovery in user experience for those PNC customers.

00:12:33 - Yazad: Yes, Glenn. It is interesting, because the good thing is that PNC have acted really quickly in the month of March when user experience dropped to a point under 3, and we need to keep in mind that the story is interesting for our viewers, but this analytics platform is an integral part of the insights ecosystem for quite a few of our clients, and it empowers them to track this real-time to optimise user experience by taking corrective action sooner and by keeping recovery periods as short as possible so customer experience is not disrupted.

00:13:07 - Glenn: Absolutely, and thank you, yet again, for another dive into the analytics and a look at that US market. We'll be back again next month looking at the US market and the UK market, so, feel free to reach out. In the meantime, if you would like a personalised view of the Ipiphany platform and how we can support you looking at your banking app and making improvements there as well. Thanks again, Yazad.