PNC on Top of Charts for Brand Loyalty, Finds New Report

A Recent survey found that PNC had the highest brand loyalty among its clients. While PNC lacks the name recognition that Bank of America and Chase have, 80% of its customers only visit PNC without visiting the other four major banks. The findings were made by Cuebiq, a location intelligence firm. The firm released the data ahead of bank earnings reports. 

Surprising to many, Wells Fargo held a strong second position in terms of loyalty with 75%. Perhaps the intense focus on rebranding and a focus on corporate citizenship is paying off. The analysis focused primarily on the national banks that included Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Capital One and PNC. This group of banks saw approximately 27 million visits from October through December.

The number of overall visits of customers however, show a different story as it is based on shear volume: 

As far as share of visits, Wells Fargo ran away with that category at a 36% share, 11 full percentage points ahead of Chase. In contrast, Capital One had a very disappointing 3% of share of visits. PNC and Bank of America had an 18% share each. 

Perhaps Capital One’s focus more on products than overall brand loyalty could explain the low loyalty figures.  The bank had only 51% of customers exclusively visiting their locations and 22% of their customers actually visited Chase banks specifically. 

Even so, to look at these numbers at face value may not tell the entire story, as one should look at the bank’s overall strategy for more in depth analysis. PNC may be looking to own the relationship of a consumer, whereas Capital One is just looking for loyalty in one or two services. For instance, when a consumer first thinks of Capital One it likely thinks of it as a Credit Card distributer before being a full service bank.  Length of visit is a factor.  For instance, 44% of Capital One visitors, according to Cuebiq’s survey spent at lead 25 minutes in one location. This is by far and away the most time dwelling in one location.  That shows loyalty of a different kind.  Perhaps they are pleased with this result because it shows that the stickiness of the Café approach is catching on.   

Perhaps the biggest take away from this data is not that one bank is beating another in terms of customer loyalty, but to analyze what strategy yields specific results. If the bank wants to increase staying time for customer experience then the Capital One story looks a lot better despite their customers’ tendency to wander into other competitors assuming Capital One is confident that they meet their specific objectives while they are hanging out at the Café style environment. It is worth looking into the different approach as not only the online experience is transforming, the branch experience is moving almost as quickly.