Today I have been to a great event laid on by the Institute of Customer Service Institute of Customer Service It was one of their regular forums but this time the subject was measuring and using customer satisfaction. This builds on the recently announced figures by the institute on their UK Customer Satisfaction Index July 2012.
The results are very interesting and show rising levels of satisfaction across UK PLC but with a definite difference between some industry sectors than others. The best scores are to be found in retail, both food and non-food and the lowest scores in utilities. The best scores are around ten percentage points higher than local government. I am pleased to note however (but cannot explain really why I am feeling such schadenfreude) that local government received a better score than central government by over two percentage points.
Does this mean that the service that is given by public services is of a lower quality than that of the commercial sector and in particular the retail sector or are the public sector customers just more demanding? I suspect that there is some weighting that needs to be given to the fact that the public sector cannot pick and choose its customers whereas retailers can. The latter are able to promote to and encourage specific sectors of the population and thereby choose to avoid others. Local government has an obligation to all of the people who fall within its catchment whether they (the resident) like it or not and whether the services that are provided are wanted or not. Indeed some of the services provided by government will invariably lead to dissatisfaction in some parties depending upon which side of a decision they fall. Planning applications can be a good example. The fact that utilities tend to fall at the lower end of the satisfaction scale would support this as they also have a universal service offering.
In addition there are two areas of local public sector that have very high customer satisfaction ratings and they are the ambulance service at eighty eight and the fire and rescue service at eighty seven points. This must be expected in that they respond to, in the main, very specific and niche requirements which does not detract from the high regard in which they are held. ‘My house is on fire, can you come round please?’ Who wouldn’t be satisfied when they turn up?
Customer satisfaction surveys are great and I very much support the work that the ICS is doing but a degree of caution needs to be taken when trying to interpret the figures. One swallow doesn’t make a summer and a higher number doesn’t mean that you are necessarily better. What is most important is that industry is thinking about these issues and is trying to measure and act upon the results. The numbers are telling a story, that is all and it needs to be listened to. The most important measure however is how well you did today compared with how well you did yesterday – from the perspective of your customers.
If you are interested the satisfaction index can be found here: UK-Customer-Satisfaction-Index
Thoughts from a Guerrilla Worker 