A banking survey of 2,460 New London County residents over the summer has found that both customers and non-customers hold Navy Federal and Charter Oak credit unions in high regard, but that an unusually large share of people plan to leave their bank within six months.

These are the local findings from the Connecticut Bank Benchmarks rankings this year, an online survey conducted by Customer Experience Solutions that garnered 28,645 responses across the state.

This is the third Connecticut Bank Benchmarks survey from the company since it started doing the rankings at the end of 2016.

"The biggest takeaway is that there's a lot of market potential right now in play in Connecticut," said Bruce Paul, president and CEO of Customer Experience Solutions. "People aren't very happy with their banks, and a lot of them are thinking about changing."

Customer Experience Solutions, based in Westport, also conducts this survey in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New York and New Jersey.

The survey asked both retail and commercial customers for their thoughts on their own bank, and it asked retail and commercial customers about their impressions of other banks.

In overall quality, customers and non-customers — for both retail and commercial — ranked Navy Federal and Charter Oak credit unions in the top two spots.

Bank of America came in last for overall quality among retail customers and non-customers. It ranked 12 out of 14 for banks among commercial customers, and five out of 20 for commercial non-customers.

Under the category of technology and tools, retail customers ranked Charter Oak fifth and Bank of America eighth out of 19 banks. But the impression among non-customers was dramatically different: Out of 21 banks, Bank of America ranked first and Charter Oak was at 16.

Customer Experience Solutions also asked non-customers about their impressions of banks' contribution to the community, since this is "an important driver of consideration," Paul noted.

Among retail customers, the top three institutions were Charter Oak, Connecticut Community and Navy Federal credit unions, while the bottom three were TD, Bank of America and Dutch Point Credit Union.

For community contributions, Charter Oak President Brian Orenstein cited the credit union's $100,000 in 100 Days matching gifts program and its annual scholarship program, which gives $2,000 to every high school in eastern Connecticut.

Noting the strong overall performance of both Charter Oak and Navy Federal, he said credit unions have come a long way in Connecticut but that there is still progress to be made on awareness.

Orenstein was "a little disappointed" in the technology results on the non-customer side.

"People in general might not think that credit unions are large enough and technologically savvy enough to compete with the banks," Orenstein said, but he feels the systems are the same if not better.

On the retail side, 11 percent of New London County respondents said they will leave their banks within six months, compared to 8 percent statewide. The top reasons were banks giving customers the runaround (21 percent) and not proactively recommending solutions (20 percent).

"I think a lot of little banks get scared of being pushy," Paul said, "but the flip side of pushy is proactive, and customers really want proactive."

One of the top banks people wanted to leave was Bank of America, Paul said. The reasoning from customers who responded to the survey was that the bank is closing branches and making its sales force too pushy.

Bank of America spokesperson Tara Burke said in an email that the bank is not familiar with the survey or results.

"Our internal measures for client satisfaction have never been higher," she said. "We continuously listen to feedback from our clients that helps us improve the overall experience."

She noted that Bank of America does not break out its client satisfaction data by region.

Connecticut Bank Benchmarks is funded solely through subscriptions to view the rankings. An annual subscription to a single market for a single subscriber — a New London County subscription for Citizens Bank, for instance — is $9,200.

Paul said nine of the 17 multi-branch credit unions and banks in New London County are subscribers.

The survey was done through online survey panels, in which the panelists are screened to check their identity and in which respondents are a representative population by age, gender, ethnicity, income and geography, Paul said.

Before founding Customer Experience Solutions, Paul worked in consulting and research at Qualtrics, Greenwich Associates and Synovate. He previously ran the global Financial Services Division of The Nielsen Company.