Discovery Bank sees steady increase in net sentiment scores since 2020

DataEQ has published its 2024 South African Banking Sentiment Index, which, this year, placed Discovery Bank first overall, ranking first in both operational and reputational performance.

The Index provides an in-depth look at how consumers perceive the country’s eight biggest banks and is based on a dataset of more than three million public social media posts between September 2023 and August 2024.

Key highlights from the DataEQ research:

• Discovery Bank clients took to social media to post positively about the service, their Vitality benefits, flight discounts, app security features and personalised home loans.
• Banking apps in general were perceived as easy to use and the Discovery Bank app had the most positive mentions.
• Discovery Bank saw high social media expressions of interest in its accounts and credit cards.

Hylton Kallner, CEO at Discovery Bank, says, “It’s good to see that, overall, the banking industry remains the best-performing industry in terms of public social media sentiment amongst South Africans. From Discovery Bank’s perspective, we want to know how our clients feel and what is affecting them, so these insights from DataEQ offer significant benefits.

Social media enables us to engage directly and in real-time with our clients and the broader public. It gives us an immediate feedback loop on our service and products, allowing us to measure everything around our performance as close to immediately as possible and helping us to address concerns in a proactive way.”

Discovery Bank has seen a steady increase in its net sentiment scores since 2020.  

“Social media sentiment is a digital mirror and a unique tool for us to continuously improve every aspect of the bank. As a team, we set out to understand customer sentiment and how to improve it, given that we are a fully digital bank.

Collaboration between marketing, servicing and bank operations has been instrumental in positive engagement. It has become a way of working,” says Kallner.

Top position across all measures and sentiment

This year, for the first time, Discovery Bank took the top position in overall net sentiment at 47%, which is 27 percentage points above the industry average.

The 2024 South African Banking Sentiment Index also showed that Discovery Bank leads the industry in operational sentiment, with the bank having the lowest volume of negative risk conversations. Moving up five positions since 2023, reputational sentiment is another area where Discovery Bank took the top position.

The bank was specifically mentioned for winning the best consumer solution award at the MTN Business App Awards, its product launches, partnerships, and community initiatives.

Kallner says, “We are very pleased with this result, especially as we continue to enhance our products and improve the service we deliver to clients every day. Our social media team is the best. We take our work seriously, but we also have fun, and our clients connect with this. We start conversations and we see people engage. I think there is a beautiful personality to the bank. As a digital bank, it’s important that our clients can engage with us across all digital platforms. This is another aspect our clients recognise us for – they enjoy interacting with us, and we enjoy the direct engagement with them.”

Some further aspects that added to the positive sentiment, include the Vitality Money programme, and campaigns linked to hashtags, such as #DiscoveryBestBank, also contributed positive customer sentiment.