UK Customer Satisfaction Index (UKCSI)

The UK Customer Satisfaction Index (UKCSI)

The UKCSI is the national barometer of customer satisfaction published twice a year by The Institute of Customer Service since 2008. It is an independent, objective benchmark of customer satisfaction on a consistent set of measures on 281 organisations and organisation types in 13 sectors.

The UKCSI provides a unique way of tracking and comparing customer satisfaction performance across the UK economy. An organisation’s inclusion in the UKCSI is unrelated to membership of The Institute. The UKCSI is designed to give an objective view of the state of customer satisfaction in the UK.

July 2023: key findings

The July 2023 UKCSI is 76.6 (out of 100), a drop of 1.8 points compared to July 2022 and its lowest score since 2015. 

  • The adverse impact on customer satisfaction of problems and bad experiences has increased, compared to a year ago
  • Organisations have taken longer to resolve complaints and more problems remain unresolved
  • Each of the 13 UKCSI sectors has lower customer satisfaction than a year ago. The biggest decline compared to July 2022 is in the Transport and Utilities sectors
  • Just 15 organisations (5% of those receiving a UKCSI score) have improved by at least 2 points compared to July 2022
  • 18% of customers feel their financial well-being is poor or very poor, up from 12% in July 2022. The impact of bad customer experiences is often most acute for customers with low levels of financial well-being
  • From the perspective of customers, the leading issues organisations should improve are making it easy to contact the right person to help, employee behaviours and competence, and website navigation
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The UKCSI in the media

Jo Causon In The News - The Telegraph

According to our latest UKCSI, companies are taking longer and longer to handle complaints, costing the economy £9.8bn a year in lost time in a major blow to productivity. Read the full article on The Telegraph.

Read full article

AI and customer service - Sky News: Business Live with Ian King

 

Latest UKCSI State of the nation report - July 2023

What the UKCSI includes

The UKCSI includes an index score for organisations and sectors based on customers’ responses across a range of metrics. The UKCSI also features insight about customer satisfaction with different channels and types of experience and in some cases different types of product or service.

We also highlight evidence about the relationship between customer satisfaction and trust, reputation, recommendation and financial performance.

What are the UKCSI questions based on?

The UKCSI is based on the top customer priorities described in the report “Customer Priorities: What Customers Really Want”. 

The questions in the UKCSI are based on customers’ priorities – the attributes of customer experience with organisations that are rated as most important by customers. The Institute conducted recent research into customers’ priorities to ensure that the UKCSI remains a relevant and essential benchmark. The output of this research is new insight into both customers’ stated priorities, as well as “softer” factors which may not necessarily have a high stated importance, but nevertheless show a strong relationship with customer satisfaction.

As well as reporting an overall index score based on customers’ responses across the full range of measures, this report includes index scores for five distinct dimensions of the customer experience: Experience, Complaints Handling, Customer Ethos, Emotional Connection and Ethics.

How to use the UKCSI

Organisations use the UKCSI to identify emerging and long-term trends in customer experience. The UKCSI highlights the characteristics and differentiators of the highest performing organisations as well as key areas for improvement.

The UKCSI is designed not primarily as a league table but as an independent benchmark and source of knowledge to complement and enhance the insight that organisations already collect.

How many UKCSI sector reports are available?

13 sectors reports:

  • Automotive
  • Finance
  • Insurance
  • Leisure
  • Public services (Local)
  • Public services (National)
  • Retail (Food)
  • Retail (Non-food)
  • Services
  • Telecommunications
  • Tourism
  • Transport
  • Utilities

How to use the UKCSI Sector reports?

UKCSI sector reports allow you to:

  • benchmark customer satisfaction performance against other organisations in the sector on over 30 customer experience metrics
  • analyse overall customer satisfaction, NPS, customer effort, trust, reputation
  • link customer satisfaction to future buying behaviours, including consumers likelihood to repurchase, remain a customer and recommend
  • identify what differentiates the highest and lowest performing organisations in each sector
  • understand the latest evidence about drivers of complaints and satisfaction with complaint handling
  • compare findings with your own customer surveys, business benchmarking surveys or voice of the customer analysis
  • identify key areas of focus, create improvement plans and set measures.

UKCSI resources available to members *

The main UKCSI report on the state of customer satisfaction in the UK can be accessed here.

Institute organisational members are in addition entitled to a sector report with sector-specific insight and trends and metrics for organisations in the sector.

Members can also access a sector resource pack which contains key measures in spreadsheet format as well as additional sector-specific data and insight.

*Specific benefits vary by membership level

How to benchmark my organisation against the UKCSI?

Business Benchmarking is a measurement of customer satisfaction that your organisation can use to benchmark against leaders in your sector and beyond. Identify strengths and areas for development and benchmark your performance with other organisations. Access the Business Benchmarking page for more information.

Core UKCSI methodology

Each UKCSI incorporates two sets of data to create a rolling measure of customer satisfaction.  Each UKCSI includes responses collected in March to April and September to October each year.

It is representative of the UK adult population by region, age and gender.

Customers are asked to rate their experience of dealing with a specific organisation in the previous three months.  Customers can only choose one organisation per sector but can complete the survey for up to five different sectors.  The UKCSI currently comprises of 45,000 total responses.

How the UKCSI score is calculated

The UK Customer Satisfaction Index (UKCSI) scores are expressed as a number out of 100.  The UKCSI score for each organisation is the average of all of its customers’ satisfaction scores for each of the metrics, multiplied by ten, with a weighting applied reflecting the priority score for each measure.  The sector score is the mean average of all responses for that sector, multiplied by ten.  The overall UKCSI is based on the mean average of each sector’s score.

How the UKCSI works

The UKCSI is based on 52,000 responses from an online customer panel. Customers rate their experience of an organisation they have recently dealt with on over 25 metrics of customer satisfaction, covering Experience, Complaints, Customer Ethos, Emotional Connection and Ethics. The measures are based on The Institute’s research into customer stated priorities and attributes that correlate strongly with high levels of customer satisfaction.

UKCSI Reports

Sample UKCSI reports

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    Benchmark your business against the UKCSI

    Benchmark your performance against leaders in your sector and beyond

    Business Benchmarking

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