You can’t keep everyone happy all the time. This is true for everyone, from banks to film directors, but it’s especially true in some areas. How many standup comedians have a bit about waiting for the cable guy? And a lot of people have a horror story about their ex-mechanic. It’s a part of life. What is the ranking for banks in customer satisfaction?

For banks, keeping their customers satisfied can seem Sisphyean, but it’s not impossible. Customer satisfaction for a bank may look different than customer satisfaction for a shoe store. People choose to go to the shoe store. It’s fun. They’re predisposed to like it.

Banks are more of a necessity. But by providing good value and not burdening customers with unnecessary hassles, banks can still see a good amount of customer satisfaction.

The American Customer Satisfaction Index (ASCI) calculates customer satisfaction by weighing customer expectations, perceived quality, and perceived value. ASCI also gets customer opinions on a bank’s website, its financial transaction speed, its number of ATMs and the convenience of their locations, its interest rate competitiveness, its variety of financial services, and the courtesy of its staff, among other things.

Ranking: Banks in Customer Satisfaction

With this, they have compiled data on the best banks when it comes to customer satisfaction. Below are the ten best banks in customer satisfaction, as well as some noteworthy details on what distinguishes their services.

1. PNC Bank tops the charts with an ASCI score of 78. They offer mobile banking, online bill pay, text banking, mobile payments, and many other features.

2. BT&T is close behind at 77. Users can order checks, checkbook covers, and other accessories online. Additionally, users can receive their banking statements online, saving paper and reducing the risk of identity theft.

3. Capital One is tied with BT&T at 77.

4. US Bank is just below them at 76. They offer two ways to send money online — with U.S. Bank Send Money and a Western Union Money Transfer service, — and recipients can receive money electronically and in cash. Its 3,239 nationwide locations are a major convenience.

5. Wells Fargo is at 75. Along with that, its 6,200 locations in 39 states and convenient business hours (generally they are open 50 hours a week) are a great help to the traditional customer.

6. SunTrust Bank is at 74. Some two million of their clients have used their online banking service.

7. Citibank is at 73. Its mobile app provides instant access to account balances and recent transactions, and lets users make credit card payments with the push of a button. Citibank comes with outside-the-box perks, from concert presale tickets, to a customer reward program that offers travel and merchandise.

8. Chase Bank has a score of 71. Chase’s mobile app which allows users to view check deposits from a cellphone is a big priority for the company. Their online banking service uses advanced encryption technology, assuring user security. And their ATM network is considered by Time Magazine to be the best in the nation, with 18,468 brick and mortar ATMs nationwide.

9. Citizens Bank has an even 70. With phone reps available 24/7, online web chat, and some 65 hours a week of branch hours, including Sundays, Citizens’ accessibility is not too shabby.

10. Finally, Bank of America has a score of 68. Their online banking service has been ranked #1 for 7 years in Keynote’s Banker Scorecard. They offer a remarkable 5,083 branches nationwide.

Differentiating Factors

So how can a bank stand out? While customers clearly value friendly in-person interactions, the overall customer experience is progressively moving online.

1. Digital Resources — by providing exemplary online and over-the-phone support, incorporating the latest cutting-edge technology, and giving customers the tools they need to solve their own problems when possible, the forward-thinking bank can be a shining light in a sea of endless fog.

2. User Experience Platform — User Experience Platforms provides customer support representatives with the tools to interact with and navigate through the applications, data sets, services and content they engage with on a day-to-day basis. This enables bank representatives to be more on top of things, more able to help customers, and, importantly, will spend less time looking up answers, cutting down handling times drastically. Below is an example of a user experience platform that guides users through the site.

3. Virtual Computer Assistants — with the dramatic advances in Natural-Language Processing technology, Virtual Computer Assistants (VCAs) are capable of far more than they were just a few years ago—while they were once just avatars on top of knowledge base, they are now capable of real interactions and able to complete transactions– in some ways, they can fill in for a customer service representative, without requiring a salary or health insurance.

If a VCA can solve a customer’s problem, the customer won’t have to wait at all.

4. Self-Learning Knowledge Base — speaking of not waiting, there’s the self-learning knowledge base, powered by machine-learning algorithms that can process large amounts of data from many customer interactions.

The self-learning knowledge bases catalogs and categorizes the various problems and solutions that customers present, creating an easily searchable database that lets customers find the solutions to their problems, by themselves, which is not only convenient but also a self-esteem booster.

And customer service departments can draw just as much benefit from a self-learning knowledge base as customers—they are also well served by a database with problems and answers. Again, this leads to shorter handling times.

The customer may think that the service representative with whom they are dealing is a real expert, a regular bank MacGuyver, a financial Richard Feynman, when in reality the service representative just has the right toolset.

As Arthur C. Clarke said, “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”. By dazzling customers with a little figurative wizardry, the bank can keep customers enthralled, and an enthralled customer is a satisfied customer.

So, these are the rankings for banks in customer satisfaction. In a lot of ways, it’s what the customer doesn’t see that determines what they do see—there’s a lot of behind the scenes work that goes into a good customer experience, and not all of it can or should be public. Still, the work pays off when a customer feels valued, or equally importantly, feels like they’re getting good value.