About UK Customer Satisfaction Index Business Benchmarking

Costs

The cost is £7,500 plus VAT for each survey. (Institute of Customer Service members are entitled to a discount.)

Contact us

• call us on 01206 571716
• fill in a contact form

Features

• collation and scoring of respondents; questions are based on the top 20 customer priorities
• web based reporting via unique pass code, results available to down load for one month
• customer satisfaction rating benchmarked nationally and by your industry sector

What's involved:

• designed to be completed in two to six months
• internal business coordinator required to engage with the Institute
• you start the process online when you are ready
• you will receive two emails during the process:
  • the first to upload your customers email addresses
  • the second to tell you the process is complete and you're ready to start action planning
• action planning with the support of your local account director

Survey 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 available at sector level as part of our sector presentations).

The underlying research

The UKCSI is based on the top 20 customer priorities described in the report Customer priorities: What customers really want.

The ICS research found that the top ten from these priorities are:

1. overall quality of the product or service
2. being treated as a valued customer
3. speed of service
4. friendliness of staff
5. handling of problems and complaints
6. handling of enquiries
7. competence of staff
8. ease of doing business
9. being kept informed
10. 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 presentations, 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. 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:

1. How well they avoid giving customers a problem in the first place
2. 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:

1. How happy the customer is with how their complaint was handled
2. 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

Contact us

• call us on 01206 571716
• fill in a contact form