Government departments and agencies and local government have increased their customer satisfaction levels, according to a major survey.
Although they have done better, government departments and agencies and local government are still in the bottom half of the 12 private and public sectors rated in the latest national measure of customer satisfaction by the Institute of Customer Service (ICS).
The UK Customer Satisfaction Index (UKCSI) online poll asked 12,000 people to rate how well companies and organisations performed in key areas.
Priorities such as complaint handling, professionalism, quality, competence and friendliness of staff saw significant increases for government departments and agencies and local government.
The satisfaction index for government departments and agencies now stands at 67 out of 100, an improvement of two points on the previous index. Local government has increased by a pleasing six points bringing its rating to 64.
ICS executive director, Robert Crawford says: “The main thing is that government departments and agencies and local government have improved by a fair margin. Time will tell but it may be that the focus this Government is applying to customer service is bearing fruit and customers are actually noticing the difference.”
In the government departments and agencies sector the Ambulance Service scored a highly commendable 86, well above the all sector average of 71. Even better is the Fire Service on 88 in the local government sector.
Poorly performing organisations such as HMRC (Inland Revenue) and local councils pull down the sector average.
“Some people might feel they are tied in to government departments and agencies and local government and are ‘reluctant customers’ but no matter, they should still be treated as customers,” adds Crawford.
“Just because people don’t like paying taxes, doesn’t mean they will dislike the taxman.”
ENDS 01 July 2008
For further press information, please contact:
Kay Williamson,
Gravitas Public Relations, 7 Imperial Square, Cheltenham, GLOS GL50 1QB
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Notes to editors:
ICS is the professional body for customer service whose primary purpose is to lead and raise customer service performance and professionalism.
The ICS completed a major piece of research into what matters most to customers. There are 20 individual factors that can be grouped into five attributes: professionalism, problem solving, timeliness, quality/ efficiency and being easy to do business with.
The full research, including how these service priorities relate to each other and the extent they vary by sector and geography, are detailed in the report customer priorities: what customers really want which is available to editors free of charge from ICS by emailing caroline@gravitaspr.co.uk
This research forms the basis of the UKCSI questionnaire which is a self-completion, web-based survey repeated every six months. Results are determined on a geographically and demographically representative sample of UK adults and data is collected for all organisations with a high market share in each segment of the private sector and the main players in the public sector. This latest UKCSI is based on a sample of 12,000 adults surveyed during May and June 2008.
The UKCSI is produced from the scores received back from the survey asking customers to rate, on a scale of 1-10, their experience of customer service. The questionnaire is based on the 20 factors determining the quality of customer service, and measured across 12 business sectors.
Each of these factors is weighted according to how important customers said they were in the ICS research Customer priorities: what customers really want and 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 - and these are taken into account in the calculation of the UKCSI. This makes the scores exceptionally robust as they are not simply a percentage of respondents who answered a question in the positive or negative – they are derived from a weighted index of multiple questions.
The UKCSI has been welcomed by BSI British Standards. It says: “We believe it is an important step in improving customer satisfaction in the UK as well as a useful tool for consumers and business. Customer satisfaction is a key area of standardisation for BSI and our own work in this area potentially assists organisations to improve their position in the index.”
More information is available at ukcsi.com which details the full methodology of the UKCSI and gives additional information on the results within each of the 12 sectors.