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Big is not necessarily beautiful, according to a survey of 15,000 bank customers published today by Which? Money.
Three small banks – Smile, First Direct and the Co-operative – came top overall for providing customer satisfaction, while Abbey, Barclays and Halifax – heavyweights of the high street – languished in the bottom three.
Martyn Hocking, editor of Which? Money, said: "While a good deal is likely to be the main reason for choosing a financial provider, customer satisfaction should also figure highly.
"Once again our findings show that big banks are being left behind by the smaller players, which seem to offer a better service and keep their customers more satisfied."
A spokesperson for Which? denied the biggest banks were bound to do worst because they had the most customers: "The research is an average customer score based on factors such as overall service, whether the provider keeps you informed about better deals, the accuracy of statements and the product itself – not the total number of complaints.
"It therefore works out fairly – just because you have more customers doesn't mean you'd get a worse score than a smaller company. In addition we'd expect any company – large or small – to offer good customer service."
The magazine asked how satisfied members were with their current account, savings, mortgage and credit card providers. Smile and First Direct generated the highest customer scores for their current accounts (88% and 85% respectively), followed by Cahoot and Co-operative Bank (82%).
First Direct was top with mortgage customers, scoring 90% – 11% more than the runner up Yorkshire building society – and was just pushed into second place (with 78%) for savings by the Co-operative Bank (80%).
John Lewis and Waitrose scored the highest mark for customer satisfaction with credit cards (90%), followed by Nationwide (87%) and Smile (86%).
Abbey, which came bottom in each category – with the exception of mortgages where it came second from bottom – rejected the findings, saying there were "significant issues" with the research.
A spokesperson for the bank said: "The research is all at least six months out of date, and the bulk of it was undertaken nine months ago in April 2008.
"What is more, much of the analysis of Abbey's service is based on a small number of customers. Abbey's credit card service is based on the opinion of 35 people – that's only a fraction of our total number of credit card customers (0.005%). The biggest sample of Abbey customers is only 267, yet Abbey has more than 16 million customers."
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