J.D. Power and Associates has released its 2009 Retail Banking Satisfaction Study, which measures satisfaction amongst consumer-bank customers in the U.S.

The verdict: customers are not happy. In fact, they’re 6% less satisfied with their banking experience than they were in 2007.

That alone is not terribly surprising. One, people love to hate easy targets, whether it’s the telcos, the airlines or big banks. What’s more, the credit squeeze has put banks in the position of having to be the bearer of bad news to many customers (”Sir, your account is overdrawn.”).

Nor is it surprising that fees are the single greatest source of dissatisfaction reported by bank customers. One out of 3 customers who switched banks in the last year did so as a result of fee increases. NSF fees (which rose from $30 to $35 in the last year).

What’s surprising is who is doing the switching. It’s the A-listers. The people who float to the top of the CRM database. Or, as J.D. Powers’ Michael Beird puts it, “the customers (who reported) the lowest level of commitment in 2009 just so happen to be the most valuable banking customers, i.e., those customers with deposit balances that are 15 percent higher than average.”

This study raises some very interesting questions:

• Is this the beginning of a longer term trend?
• Are fees truly the culprit, or merely a convenient hook for customers to hang their frustration on?
• Why have high-value customers waited so long to begin exercising their prerogative?
• Is share of wallet or high product penetration less of an impediment to switching than we have imagined?
• What is the decision process that leads high-value customers to switch?
• Is switching an entirely logical decision or does it have an emotional component?
• How does a customer’s experience with bank staff affect their decision to stay or switch?
• What are the types of experiences that get otherwise sedentary customers to flee?
• What factors affect a switching customer’s decision about which new bank to adopt?
• Is there a pattern in the types of banks customers switch to (e.g., smaller, credit unions)?
• What can front-line staff do to stem the flow of fleeing high-value customers?

What’s your take on this sad state of affairs for banks? Please leave a comment below. If we receive enough comments, we’ll publish them in a future blog post.

Image credit: powerbooktrance