The customers have spoken

Bank customers have had their say on which bank they considered to be best at dealing with customer complaints. First National Bank is the overall winner (category of Excellence in Complaint Management) for the first time. Last year's winner was Nedbank. The result is based on the telephone survey of 400 customers of each of the four top retail banks in South Africa (ABSA, Standard Bank, Nedbank and FNB) conducted by leading independent market research company Markinor.

The Ombudsman for Banking Services has sponsored the awards for the last five years, to encourage the banks to focus their attention in the important business activity of providing redress to customers with legitimate grievances.

In addition to the main award, accolades went to Nedbank in the category of Code of Banking Practice Marketing Commitment Award (the bank customers believed to done the most to promote the Code) as well as the Marketing Commitment Award, which recognizes the bank that excelled at promoting the office of the Ombudsman for Banking Services during 2005, as determined by the Markinor survey. The Individual Recognition Award was presented to Theresia Spang of ABSA. This award is presented to the bank employee involved in the Ombudsman liaison process who has provided excellent service judged by their interactions with the OBS. One of the necessary criteria in order to be considered for this award is evidence of having initiated measures to improve their bank's level of service.

Gary Colling of WesBank received the OBS Independent Directors Award. The independent, non-banker directors of the OBS board select the bank employee actively interfacing with customers whom they consider has excelled at handling complaints. Nominations for this award are received from the banks themselves. At the function at which the awards were presented, Banking Ombudsman Neville Melville commented on the fact that in spite of the perception that everyone had a complaint against their bank, Markinor had struggled to track down the requisite number of customers who had had complaints for the survey.