Capitec Bank, powered by Qmatic Customer Experience Management (CEM) solutions, has been voted South Africa’s favourite financial institution in terms of customer service.

Capitec Bank took first place for financial services and third place overall across 32 major industries in the Ask Afrika Orange Index Award, the largest and most widely-referenced service excellence benchmark in South Africa. It is Capitec Bank’s third time in the past five years to win first place in the financial services category, and its first time to be rated among the top three service companies overall.

“We would like to congratulate our client, Capitec Bank, for being rated best at customer service in their sector. Capitec Bank’s ever improving customer experience, due to the implementation of the Qmatic CEM solution, is evident in the receiving of these awards,” says Eugene Swanepoel, Managing Director of Emerge Queue.

Capitec Bank’s performance was measured against that of four other major banks in the financial services category, overall against 155 companies surveyed across 32 industries.

“We would like to thank our customers for rating us best at customer service in our sector and giving Capitec Bank such a high overall score. We are always working to earn their trust and service satisfaction by offering simple, transparent, affordable and sophisticated banking solutions. We are opening more than 100 000 new accounts a month and we know this would not have been possible without the endorsement of our happy customers across South Africa,” says Gerrie Fourie, chief executive of Capitec Bank.

“Retail client service is always a challenge, as each day is a new start to building relationships with clients,” Fourie added.

The annual Ask Afrika Orange Index was launched in 2001 to track service excellence in South Africa in the public and private sectors. The public is surveyed on the performance of companies across 31 sectors in terms of customer effort, overall reputation, treating customers fairly, first call resolution and Net Promoter Score (NPS).

While the index is based on an international model, it has been tailored over the past 13 years to the South African market, and this year also includes insight into the customer’s emotional journey across service touch points. This year’s index includes 13 new industry categories, including building retail, security and armed response companies, private hospitals, and funeral and burial services. The index now also incorporates the largest call centre customer service benchmark in South Africa.

In this year’s survey, “treating customers fairly” has been added to the service elements that determine whether service is perceived as good or bad, which also includes “first call resolution”, “propensity to recommend or promote”, and “customer effort”. This fairness attribute is particularly important for building customer confidence in a product or service offering. The index also looks at consistency across face-to-face, telephonic, and e-mail customer communication, and how adaptable and relevant companies’ service delivery tactics are.

The Ask Afrika Orange Index conference was held on 14 November 2014 at Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) to showcase this year’s companies with the highest standards in service delivery. Capitec Bank received its trophy at an awards ceremony at the Taj Hotel, in Cape Town, on Wednesday 19 November.