About the UKCSI
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
The Institute of Customer Service publishes the UKCSI, which allows the public and organisations to gauge just how good British service is. Organisations that appear in the index can compare how they perform against others in their sector, and whether there are regional variations in their performance. They can also tell which service areas they perform well and not so well in. (We can add your organisation to the index.)
Methodology
The UKCSI is based on the results of an online questionnaire that is completed by a representative sample of 26,000 UK adults. Customers are asked to rate organisations across various sectors on each of the factors considered most important. They are also asked about any complaints they'd made and how the organisation handled them (this complaints data is published in detailed sectoral reports, available to buy from the Institute of Customer Service shop).
The underlying research
The UKCSI is based on the top 20 customer priorities described in the report Customer priorities: what customers really want, which is available to buy from The Institute of Customer Service.
The ICS research found that the top ten from these priorities are:
- overall quality of the product or service
- being treated as a valued customer
- speed of service
- friendliness of staff
- handling of problems and complaints
- handling of enquiries
- competence of staff
- ease of doing business
- being kept informed
- helpfulness of staff
Satisfaction scores are collected every six months when the survey is repeated, while importance scores are generated by the customer priorities research. This research is reviewed every two to three years.
Geography
Results are based on a representative sample of adults in each of these areas:
- The United Kingdom
- Scotland
- Northern Ireland
- Wales
- Northern England
- Central England
- Southeast England
- Southwest England
Frequency
The index is updated every six months — once in January and again in July of each year.
The questions
The UKCSI is based on the 20 priorities that UK consumers say are most important to them. The survey questions, tailored slightly for each sector are:
How satisfied or dissatisfied are you with:
- Professionalism
- Staff appearance
- Helpfulness of staff
- Friendliness of staff
- Competence of staff
- Treated like a valued customer
- Quality & efficiency
- Reputation
- Price/cost
- Product/service quality
- Billing
- Ease of doing business
- Continuity of staff
- Product/service range
- Information/advice
- Ease of doing business
- Access/appearance of premises
- Problem solving
- Handling of enquiries
- Being kept informed
- Handling of complaints
- Outcome of complaints
- Timeliness
- Speed of service
- On-time delivery/solution
We've worked out the UKCSI scores from the answers to these questions and other, more general ones dealing with overall satisfaction and how likely customers are to stay with an organisation, recommend it to a friend and buy again.
We also ask a number of questions about how complaints are handled. The scores from these questions aren't part of the UKCSI — we report them separately. This information is available in our detailed sectoral reports, which you can buy from the Institute of Customer Service shop.
Customer Satisfaction Index scoring
We produce our Customer Satisfaction Index from the scores we get back from the questionnaire. We base the questionnaire on the separate factors determining the quality of customer service, and we measure these across a variety of business sectors.
We weight each of these factors according to how important customers said they were in the Institute of Customer Service research Customer priorities: what customers really want. The weighted satisfaction scores are used to produce the Index. The weightings can vary from sector to sector — some factors are more important in some sectors than in others; there are similar variations between nations and regions, and we also take these into account as we calculate our UKCSI.
Complaints Index
There are two factors that determine how well organisations avoid customer dissatisfaction caused by problems and complaints:
- How well they avoid giving customers a problem in the first place
- How well they handle the complaints they do get
We take both of these factors into account when we produce the UK Complaints Index, giving each of them equal weighting. We base our rating of the second factor equally on two elements:
- How happy the customer is with how their complaint was handled
- How happy the customer is with the outcome of their complaint
Sectors
The UKCSI gathers data for all organisations with a high market share in each private-sector segment, and for main players in the public sector. The aim is to cover the leading organisations in each sector, but this is easier to do in some sectors than in others. For example, the retail sectors are made up of a small number of companies, while the services sector has a huge number of small businesses.
Here are the sectors we cover, together with examples of organisations within them:
- Automotive
- Car manufacturers and dealerships
- Finance — banks
- Banks and building societies
- Finance — insurers
- Insurance companies and large brokers
- Leisure
- Fast–food outlets, pubs, entertainment centres
- Public services — local
- Local authority services, GP surgeries, emergency services
- Public services — national
- Central departments such as DELNI, agencies such as the DVLA and publicly–owned services such as Royal Mail
- Retail — food
- Supermarkets and convenience stores
- Retail — non–food
- High–street shops, out–of–town stores etc.
- Services
- Domestic, breakdown, commercial services etc.
- Telecoms
- Fixed or mobile telephones
- Tourism
- Hotel chains and holiday operators
- Transport
- Buses, trains, air travel
- Utilities
- Gas, water & electricity suppliers