Maria Ramos, Absa group chief executive, said: "This ranking is a great tribute to the loyalty of our customers and in the unstinting efforts of Absa staff. Our focus has always been on putting the needs of our customers at the centre of everything we do. This award shows that we are making progress towards becoming the bank of choice for our customers."
"We owe this award to all our loyal customers and hard-working employees," Bobby Malabie, chief executive of Absa Retail and Business Banking, said. "This great achievement is indeed proof of our commitment to customers. I have no doubt that we will continue to deliver great service to our customers and that this particular award inspires us all to do even more to secure our place in our customers' hearts. It is all part of our drive to make lives much easier through improved customer satisfaction."
Absa is in the midst of transforming a number of critical customer experiences and has used a customer experience design principle to move from a paper-based product to a customer one, in a paperless environment, getting things right the first time, with rapid turnaround.
"We are very grateful to have such loyal and supportive customers and we know our frontline colleagues in Absa work tirelessly to deliver for them each and every day. However, we are not complacent and know we have some distance to go to achieve our ambition of being the 'go-to bank' in Africa," Ed Carrell, chief operating officer of Absa Retail and Business Banking said.
Carrell said Absa aims to be the 'go-to bank' for customers and that equates to being the instinctive choice for a customer, earned through consistently delivering relevant products and services, at a good price, in the most convenient way and at the right time and place, where and when a customer needs them.
"If we continue to be likeable in doing this, then we build a trust and a bond that is difficult to break, which is the cornerstone of healthy brand equity," Carrell said.
![Maria Ramos, pictured here at the 2009 World Economic Forum early in her tenure at ABSA. Copyright World Economic Forum www.weforum.org / Eric Miller emiller@iafrica.com [CC BY-SA 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-NC-ND](https://biz-file.com/c/1901/480356-300x156.jpg?4)
