Why have a Customer Satisfaction Index?
Successive UK governments – along with most forward-thinking organisations – agree that focusing on the customer has a direct effect on:
- bottom- line performance
- profitability or more efficient use of resources
- retaining customers and earning their trust
- lower costs per customer
- customer endorsements and recommendations
- staff satisfaction and turnover
- reputation
If an organisation wants to succeed, it has to be the best at what matters most to its customers. So what exactly does matter most?
ICS commissioned a major piece of research to find out customers’ priorities - which factors determine how satisfied they are with products and services. The study also shows how important these priorities are in relation to each other and how they vary from sector to sector and place to place.
The results highlighted 20 separate customer priorities, which can be grouped into five attributes:
- Professionalism
- Problem-Solving
- Timeliness
- Quality/efficiency
- Ease of doing business
You’ll find full details in the report Customer priorities: what customers really want, which is available to buy from ICS.
National CSIs
The results also showed that there’s a strong case for national CSIs in the UK at both organisational and governmental levels. There is strong evidence, mainly from the US, that customer satisfaction is the most important factor in determining growth of the economy and individual organisations.
At ICS, we’re in the unique position of being able to deliver national CSIs that:
- raise the standard of customer service by highlighting good and bad service providers, and putting pressure on the worst to improve
- benefit individual organisations by measuring their own progress and benchmarking against their own and other sectors
- are useful to government as lead indicators of economic growth
- are independent and authoritative