Discovery Bank has emerged as the leader in South Africa’s latest consumer banking customer experience rankings, according to the 2025 Customer Experience (CE) Index for the sector.
Absa followed in second position, with Standard Bank and Nedbank in a combined third position.
Developed and managed by Professor Adré Schreuder, head of Industry Chair in Customer Experience at the University of Pretoria (UP), the CE Index is a scientifically governed benchmark designed to measure the full end-to-end customer experience across multiple industries.
“Now that the benchmark has entered its second year, the index has reached a level of maturity that allows meaningful comparisons across years and across banks,” he notes.
“That provides deeper insight into how customer experience in the banking sector is evolving and where banks are improving or falling behind.”
Strong service, but declining perceptions of value
Despite intense competition among brands, the overall industry benchmark score declined marginally year-on-year, with the average CE Index score falling approximately 3.1 points across participating banks.
Schreuder attributes the drop-off to the growing gap between perceived quality and perceived value, as price-conscious customers become increasingly critical of the value for money received from their banking relationships.
Demonstrating the point, the general quality of customer engagement across channels and products scored 77.2 points out of 100 in the benchmark, considered a solid performance by international standards.
However, the perceived value of that experience was rated significantly lower at 70.1 points – a sizeable seven-point difference.
Economic pressure appears to be playing a major role in this trend. “When consumers face financial pressure, they become more conscious of fees and value. Even when the quality of the service experience remains strong, customers are reassessing whether the experience justifies the cost,” he says.
Problem resolution an industry focus area
The index also measured how effectively banks resolve customer problems, which is a key indicator in global customer experience benchmarks.
Across the South African banking sector, around 8% of customers reported experiencing an issue with their bank – a relatively low score compared to many international markets.
Of the customers experiencing problems, 47% of reported issues were successfully resolved across the industry, which is close to the international best practice of 50% resolution.
However, 31% were somewhat or partially resolved, and 22% not resolved at all.
The 22% non-resolution is a source of concern since this is much higher than the 10% international best practice for non-resolution.
Resolution outcomes can vary, as complex banking relationships may require longer resolution processes than routine transactional queries.
Even so, the findings suggest there is still room for improvement, especially in the proportion of non-resolved issues, Schreuder explains.
Loyalty programmes lose their competitive edge
Another notable finding in the 2025 index is the changing role of loyalty and rewards programmes.
In earlier years, initiatives such as rewards points and cashback incentives were considered powerful drivers of customer loyalty.
But the latest results suggest these programmes are becoming a baseline expectation rather than a meaningful differentiator between banks.
“Loyalty programmes once provided a clear competitive advantage. Today they are almost universal across the industry, and customers often join them for their practical benefits rather than as an expression of brand loyalty.”
This mirrors trends seen globally in industries such as aviation, where frequent flyer programmes have also evolved from competitive differentiators into expected features of customer offerings.
“When every bank offers a loyalty programme, it stops being a differentiator. Customers then judge their bank on whether they deliver the basics of customer experience reliably.”
The index also measures how customer loyalty translates into real behaviour, and the findings point to a distinct gap between customers’ stated willingness to recommend their bank and their real recommendation behaviour.
While around 43% of banking customers say they are likely to recommend their bank, only about 26% report having actively recommended it to others.
This produces an intention-to-behaviour ratio of 60.8% for the sector, suggesting that positive sentiment does not always translate into real advocacy.
Fixing the basics remains critical
The CE Index also stresses that functional performance and service delivery remain among the most dominant drivers of both customer loyalty and dissatisfaction.
The Verbatim and Sentiment Analysis shows that 75% of reported customer problems relate to functional issues, such as transaction reliability, product performance, and service execution failures.
Interestingly, the same factors that cause dissatisfaction when they fail also emerge as the strongest drivers of customer loyalty when they work well.
The findings highlight an important lesson for the industry – customers reward banks that consistently get the basics right.
“You cannot deliver good customer service if the underlying product or system is poor. If the fundamentals fail, the overall customer experience will suffer,” Schreuder says.
He adds that the goal of the CE Index is not simply to rank organisations. “Instead, the index aims to create a credible benchmark that can help businesses identify where they are succeeding or where improvements are needed, while also empowering consumers to make better-informed choices.”
As competition intensifies and customer expectations continue to rise, the 2025 index suggests that banks will need to combine continued digital innovation with flawless execution of everyday banking fundamentals.
“Innovation is important, but customers are ultimately judging and rewarding banks that deliver reliability and value. Those institutions that get the basics right are the ones that will lead the customer experience race in South Africa.”