Banks have been plunging money and time into developing innovative new products and online offerings, but are they falling short on customer service?

According to the results of the latest survey from FleishmanHillard Fishburn, the answer is yes. It seems whilst banks are good at offering new products and keeping up with changing technology, they are falling far short on customer care and basic value.

Using a specially selected sample of 1064 ‘engaged consumers’ – UK adults 18-55+ who are politically engaged, actively share news about businesses on social networks, buy shares or already engage with a brand or company – the survey found a wide fap between consumers’ expectations and their experience.

Expectations of innovation for the banking industry were almost five times lower than those of customer care, suggesting that, though banking is increasingly done online, people still have high expectations of their banks in this area. Customer care was actually the highest expectation for the industry, comprising over one-third of expectations.

But banks are not meeting these expectations. In fact, Banking has the largest gap of any industry studied; no company exceeds customer expectations. People feel that banks are paying too little attention to caring for their customers while they’re seen to be delivering far more on innovation than expected, an area for which most people had lower expectation of the industry.

As banks continue to innovate, customers move increasingly to digital platforms, and disrupting start-ups like online-only banks Monzo and Atom put pressure on the industry, this issue is only likely to get more critical. Businesses must start to think about a strategy to effectively communicate why their programmes of innovation are necessary to keep up with the competition, but which clearly explain why they’ll also lead to better experiences for customers.