How customers perceive a brand influences how much they are willing to spend with the brand, whether they will recommend it to others, and how likely they are to forgive the brand’s missteps. Our annual Customer Experience Index (CX Index™) benchmarking study, which has been conducted in Malaysia since 2021, answers the question, “Which banks in Malaysia provide the best customer experience (CX)?”

Over the past three years, we’ve observed a steady improvement in CX quality among the country’s biggest banks. This year, we surveyed 1,800 retail banking customers in Malaysia to determine how they perceive their experiences and how CX drives their loyalty. Here are some highlights from our report:

  • CX quality among all banks we surveyed has slightly improved. Over the last 12 months, the overall quality of banking experiences in Malaysia, judging by the industry average CX score, has improved from 65.7 to 68.7 on our 100-point scale. In fact, all of the banks we surveyed in both 2022 and 2023 posted higher CX scores in this year’s CX Index.
  • Overall differentiation in CX remained miniscule, however. During our analysis, we determine whether brands’ individual CX Index scores are far apart or closely clustered. In 2023, the CX scores for all banks were concentrated within a range of 4.8 points, which is even more concentrated than in 2022 (range of 7.1 points). The lack of standouts suggests that Malaysian banks still aren’t very differentiated and competitive in terms of CX, which warrants a CX strategy refresh.
  • Maybank reclaimed the top spot in the Malaysia banking CX Index. Maybank regained the lead in this year’s CX Index rankings after bettering its 2022 score by a modest 2.3 points. With a CX Index score of 70.8, Maybank is the only multichannel bank in Malaysia to attain a CX Index score in the good category.
  • Customers want better quality from customer service and branches. Based on our data, we are able to rank various attributes of CX quality based on their individual impact. In this year’s CX Index, banking customers prioritized three areas above all others: banking services, customer service, and branches. This means that Malaysian banks need to improve in their fundamentals and pay closer attention to where and how customers prefer to be served.
  • Positive emotions have the greatest power over customer loyalty. Emotions triggered by positive experiences stimulate loyalty. In Malaysia, the five positive emotions with the most impact on loyalty were feeling happy, respected, valued, appreciated, and confident. Our data shows why positive emotions matter to topline growth. Among Malaysian banking customers who felt happy and respected, 89% and 86%, respectively, will remain as a customer; 83% and 80% will pay for additional products; and 83% and 81% will advocate for the brand.
  • Hybrid CX gets higher ratings than either physical or digital CX. Given a choice of digital-only, physical-only, or hybrid experiences (i.e., interchangeably using physical and digital channels), Malaysian customers gave the highest CX ratings to hybrid. The difference in CX scores is significant: Customers rated hybrid CX 5.6 points higher than digital-only and 4.5 points higher than physical-only experiences.

To learn more about the Malaysia CX Index for 2023, read the full version of our report (available to Forrester clients).