2027 Financial Services Research: What Consumers Want From Their Banks

What do customers want from their bank?

It sounds like a straightforward question. But the answer may depend on the customer, the service they're using and the experience they've just had.

Someone opening a new account may have different questions from someone trying to resolve a problem. A customer who handles routine transactions online may still want to speak with a person when a decision becomes more complicated.

For financial services brands planning 2027 research, there's an opportunity to look beyond broad satisfaction and understand the experiences that shape customer expectations.

Here are several questions worth exploring.

Where do customers need more clarity?

Financial services can involve unfamiliar terms, decisions and processes. A customer may recognise a product name without fully understanding how it works or whether it fits their needs.

Research can explore:

• Which information customers look for first
• What they find difficult to compare
• Where explanations feel unclear
• When they seek help from another person
• What they wish they had known earlier

These questions can help an organisation understand the experience of receiving information. Sometimes the issue is not that information is unavailable — it's that a customer isn't sure how to use it.

What makes a digital experience useful?

A banking app may have many features, but customers may use only a few regularly.

A study could investigate what customers are trying to accomplish, which tasks are easy to complete and where they need support. It can also examine how expectations differ between routine transactions and more complicated situations.

One question I like is: "What were you trying to do when you encountered that issue?"

The answer gives a team more context than a general satisfaction rating. It can help identify the task, the moment and the information the customer needed.

When do people want a human conversation?

Digital service and human support don't have to be competing choices.

A customer may prefer to complete one task online but want reassurance or assistance for another. Research can explore which situations lead people to seek a conversation and what they expect when they do.

Do they know where to find help? Do they feel their question is understood? What would make the next step clearer?

For communications teams, these findings may also provide a useful perspective on how consumers think about convenience and service.

What influences trust?

Trust can mean different things to different people. It may involve clear communication, reliable service, security, transparency or the ability to resolve a problem.

Rather than ask only whether customers trust a financial institution, consider exploring what contributes to that trust and which experiences shape it.

A brand might discover that different groups focus on different concerns. Those comparisons should be planned before fieldwork so the study includes enough people in each audience to support the analysis.

What leads customers to consider a change?

A customer's decision to explore another provider may begin long before they open a new account.

Research can ask what prompted the search, which options they considered and what information helped them decide.

Current customers, prospective customers and people who recently switched may offer different perspectives. The right audience depends on the decision your team wants to understand.

It's also important to be precise about what the findings represent. A survey of consumers generally does not automatically describe the experience of a particular bank's customers.

Use research to inform more than one team

A financial services study can support several objectives.

Customer experience teams may identify an issue to investigate. Marketing teams may learn how customers describe a need. Communications leaders may find a meaningful topic for a report or executive perspective.

Bring those teams into the planning conversation early. Ask each group what it hopes to understand and how it would use the answer.

That helps keep the research focused while making the findings useful across the organisation.

Start with the customer question

The strongest research begins with a clear purpose: what do you want to understand, and who has the experience to explain it?

At CITE Research, we help financial services organisations design studies around the people and questions that matter to their business.

Planning consumer or financial services research for 2027? Contact CITE Research to discuss your goals.