Consulting firm, Engaged Marketing has released results from its 2010 Benchmarking survey, which assesses customer experience outcomes for leading Australian banks and other major service industries.

In the banking sector, Bank of Queensland and Bendigo Bank were the highest ranked banks, both achieving a positive Net Promoter score of 30%. Nine Australian banks were assessed, with six out of the nine receiving negative scores.

The Australian banking category as a whole achieved a score of just 3% and didn’t fare nearly as well as American banks who achieved an average category score of 20%.

The complete study ranks high profile organisations and is based on more than 6690 consumer responses Australia wide. All respondents were existing customers of their respective brands. Companies were rated and ranked using the Net Promoter Score which measures the likelihood to recommend.

Engaged Marketing founder and CEO, Chris Roberts said, “What this research shows is that for every one negative comment made about a bank, it takes around four or five positive referrals to negate the damage. Based on around 18 million banking relationships there may be as many as 30 million negative comments being made about banks by their customers every year. This makes achieving a positive customer experience, first time, more important than ever.