What customers now expect from a bank, in four demands

Customers no longer compare their bank to other banks. They compare it to the fastest thing on their phone, and the gap shows up first in how long an answer takes. Same-day is slow when the rest of a customer’s life replies in minutes.

Relevance is the second demand, and the one most often mistaken for personalisation software. A generic message reads as a bank that does not know its own customer, however well it is targeted. What people notice is whether the offer makes sense for the account they actually hold.

Honesty is simpler than it sounds: plain language on pricing, on risk, and especially when something has gone wrong. The banks that score well here write their apologies in the same register as their marketing.

Continuity ties the three together. Branch, app, email and search should feel like one organisation with one memory. Where they do not, customers assume the parts do not talk to each other — and they are usually right.