AA Insurance Tops Kantar Customer Leadership Index

AA Insurance has topped the annual Kantar Customer Leadership Index, a ranking of the best brands for customer experience, released today by data, insights, and consulting company Kantar.

Kiwibank and ASB came in second and third. Southern Cross and State also being in the top 10 highlights the success of financial services brands at delivering to customers.

To create the index, Kantar surveyed over 2,000 New Zealanders about their opinions of over 50 of New Zealand’s top brands in financial services, online shopping, retail and grocery, media and entertainment, travel, telecommunications, and energy.

The index covers all aspects of the branded customer experience including service delivery, customer centricity, brand clarity and offer excellence.

To be at the top of the index means having to perform exceptionally well at all these aspects – a very tough ask – says Kantar New Zealand Managing Director David Thomas.

“It was uncommon for a brand to do well at everything, and only our top three managed it. AA Insurance was in the top five brands for 17 of the 20 components of our Index, a testament to how well they manage the entire customer experience and empower staff to meet customer expectations.”

Offline and online retail can learn from each other about customer experience

Kantar’s research for the index shows online and offline retail brands perform well at different aspects of customer experience and leveraging the best of both could be very powerful.

Online retailer Mighty Ape came fourth overall and was the highest-ranking retailer of any type, while New World came in tenth and was the highest predominantly offline retailer.

Overall online retailers do better than offline retailers at being clear in their offer, being easy and fast to buy from, and offering good prices, while offline retailers perform better than online at being flexible, rectifying issues and providing memorable experiences.

“The retailer who can best combine the responsiveness and personal touch of an offline retailer with the ease, speed and fair value of online will have a strong competitive advantage,” says Mr Thomas.

Meaningfully different brands are the most successful

Kantar’s research shows the most successful brands are both meaningful and different.

“It’s clear from our data that three of the top brands in our ranking – AA Insurance, Kiwibank and Air New Zealand – are both meaningful and different. Customers understand what makes them unique, and that uniqueness strikes a powerful chord with customers. Other brands do well but not at both parts,” says Mr Thomas.

“Meaningfully different brands, that also offer a customer experience that matches the brand promise, have superior customer retention and desire to use more.”

The top 10 ranked brands

About Kantar

Kantar is the world’s leading data, insights and consulting company and is home to some of the world's leading expertise in these areas. Collectively, our 28,000 employees offer the most complete view of consumers – the way they think, feel, shop, share, vote and view – in over a hundred countries worldwide.

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