Why Crdit Mutuel remains, year after year, the preferred bank of the French

In opinion polls on banks, Crdit Mutuel consistently ranks first in terms of brand image and satisfaction. Between a stroke of marketing genius and an old-fashioned service culture, attempts to explain this extraordinary popularity.

Unchangeable. For years, whenever the French are asked what their favorite banking brand is, their answer is almost invariably the same: Crédit Mutuel. The latest update of the Posternak-Ifop barometer of the image of large French companies (1) confirms this observation: with an image index (2) of 49 points, Crdit Mutuel is very well ahead of the standings dedicated to banks, far ahead of Crdit Agricole and Caisse d’Epargne (41 points each). 68% of the French thus declare that they have a good image of the brand, against only 18% on the contrary, one of the lowest distrust scores of the panel. With this score, Crdit Mutuel even appears in the top 10 for brand images, along with Peugeot, Leclerc and Yves Rocher.

How to explain this popularity? However, Crdit Mutuel is neither the least expensive bank (read below), nor without doubt the most innovative. For Claude Posternak, founder of the barometer, it is above all the result of the tremendous success of his communications strategy, summed up in one slogan: A bank that belongs to its customers, has changed everything. Credit Mutuel optimizes its good understanding of the presuppositions of the French vis–vis the bank, believes the specialist. By making this choice, he both restored modernity to the mutualist discourse and embodied precisely the bank as the French expect it: without shareholders and without profits at all costs.

Result: in terms of image, there is now Crdit Mutuel and the others. Since the successive subprime and sovereign debt crises, the banking market has split into two: the camp of good, which brings together mutual and cooperative brands, and the evil camp, that of the classic capitalist banks, continues Claude Posternak. But today, Crdit Mutuel has also distanced itself from other mutualists, and constitutes a segment on its own.

Crdit Mutuel, far from being the cheapest bank

If Crdit Mutuel has such a good image, it is not because of its prices. The various mutual banking federations rank at best in 36th place (out of 129) and at worst in 107th place in our ranking of the least expensive banks on the standard basket of products and services, with a concentration of brands around the 80th place. Result: the various Crdits Mutuels are, in general, more expensive than their main mutualist competitors, the Crdit Agricole and the Caisse d’Epargne.

An exceptional level of satisfaction

Does the exceptional success of its communication strategy alone explain the popularity of Crdit Mutuel? Probably not. The mutualist brand is also distinguished by a exceptional level of customer satisfaction among the banks with a branch network.

The 2023 Bank Quality Awards (3), awarded this Thursday, November 24, 2022, have shown it again. Of the 6 customer relationship channels observed, Crdit Mutuel is on the podium 6 times, and even obtains the highest satisfaction score 4 times, for the quality of its branches, its remote customer service, its advisers for the needs of newspaper and its website. The only brand that competes (with 5 trophies, including two first places) is a subsidiary of the Crdit Mutuel Alliance Fdrale: the CIC!

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Generally speaking, 92% of Crdit Mutuel customers consider that their bank offers a good quality of service, 89% that it listens to them and 92% that it corresponds to their values. These are each time the best scores recorded, all banks combined. Neither online banks, which are very popular with their customers, nor Crdit Mutuel’s competing networks, achieve such levels of satisfaction. Including Crdit Agricole, Caisse d’Epargne and Banque Populaire, which nevertheless share many characteristics with Crdit Mutuel: decentralized regional banks, corporate customers, a local network, etc.

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The culture of service, in the genes of the brand

Does the communication strategy alone explain this gap between Crdit Mutuel and the others? Baudoin Choppin De Janvry does not think so. There is at Crdit Mutuel a culture of service that you can’t find everywhere. It’s in the brand’s genes, says the partner in the onepoint firm, which is piloting a recurring study on bank-customer relations.

A culture that is embodied in small details – At Crdit Mutuel, the advisers accompany you to the door, in a natural way – but also in the organization of networks. The turnover of advisors is slower there that elsewhere, they remain in post for 6 to 7 years, compared to 3 years, or even less, in other banks, noted Baudoin Choppin De Janvry during his missions. However, keeping his adviser as long as possible is generally what the client wants: it saves him from having to repeat his story and rebuild a relationship. Another example observed in the field by Baudoin Choppin de Janvry: Client portfolios are managed in pairs, which allows for a very short response time, even if an advisor is on leave. This is very important for the customer.

In the end, Crdit Mutuel seems to have managed to maintain an old-fashioned customer relationship, human-centric, when others have abandoned it in the name of efficiency and profitability. However, its popularity shows that it still meets the expectations of many customers.

(1) Posternak-Ifop barometer, carried out from September 1 to 2, 2022 on a representative national sample of 1,002 French people aged 18 and over. (2) This image index is calculated by subtracting the percentage of respondents with a poor image of the brand from the percentage of those with a good image. (3) OpinionWay survey for MoneyVox conducted from September 26 to October 19, 2022 with a sample of 5,013 banked French people recruited from a representative sample of the French adult population.

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