2003 Annual Report: Raising the Bar for Consumers (Page 1 of 5)

We have found that customers who say they are delighted with their banking experience are four times as likely to use more products, three times as likely to recommend the bank to others and far more likely to continue their relationship with the bank. So Bank of America has invested steadily in people and processes to make a higher standard of customer service the foundation for deepening relationships and building customer loyalty.

With this emphasis on consistent customer service standards, our banking center associates were able to deliver an 11% increase in our most demanding and significant performance measurement: what we call "customer delight" — that is, customers who give us a score of 9 or 10 for quality of service on a scale of 1 to 10. This improvement in customer satisfaction drove strong increases in sales throughout the year.

Across our banking center franchise, same-store sales, as well as sales of products such as loans, credit cards, savings accounts and mortgages, increased more than 22% year over year. And net new checking accounts — our most basic relationship-building opportunity — increased 135% to 1.24 million, which is equivalent to building the checking portfolio of the 25th largest bank in the country in a single year.