UKCSI Business Benchmarking

UKCSI Business Benchmarkingunderstanding customer priorities

instituteofcustomerservice.com

05591 ICS 3 UK C S Index v6.indd 1 17/07/2012 10:17

UKCSI Business Benchmarking

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UKCSI Business Benchmarking is a diagnostic survey tool which helps you understand how your customers view your organisation, products and service, and, where you need to focus to improve customer service performance. It also provides a benchmark of how your organisation compares to others in your sector and against other sectors. As well as statistical data on your organisation’s performance, you will also get access to customers’ anecdotal verbatim comments. It provides a powerful tool to inform your customer service strategy and plans, so that you can focus on the areas that deliver the best return on your investment.

UK Customer Satisfaction Index

The benchmarking data is based on the UK Customer Satisfaction Index. This is a rolling survey of 26,000 UK consumers published twice per year by the Institute of Customer Service which provides data on how customers rate their satisfaction with organisations across a range of sectors. Customers are asked to rate their satisfaction with organisations based on a number of priorities which have been identified as the key attributes which influence customer satisfaction.

Customer Priorities

The range of priorities identified by customers is shown on page 3, opposite. They are grouped into 5 key categories:

• Professionalism

• Quality & Efficiency

• Ease of doing business

• Problem-solving

• Timeliness


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Quality & Efficiency

Professionalism

Problem Solving

Customer Priorities

TimelinessEase of doing

Business

This reflects the factors around how the organisation presents itself to the customer and looks at key areas of:

• staff appearance • helpfulness of staff • friendliness of staff • competence of staff • whether the person was treated

as a valued customerThis relates to more strategic issues. A world class organisation will lead from the top and these requirements can be addressed at strategic and operational levels, the areas involved are

• reputation • price/Cost • product/Service Quality • billing

This looks at how approachable the organisation is and if the business has a people development plan in place which includes training. It considers different channels of customer interaction and focuses on:

• continuity of staff • product/Service range • information/Advice • ease of doing business • access/appearance of premises

This looks at how an organisation handles queries and if they are used as learning experiences. Areas covered include:

• handling of enquiries • being kept informed • handling of complaints • outcome of complaints

This looks at the speed and process at which an organisation handles its orders, queries, delivery and service. Overall this focuses on:

• speed of service • on-time delivery/solution

Customer Priorities

Achieving Customer Satisfaction

To meet the benchmark for the ServiceMark accreditation, the overall customer satisfaction index score should achieve at least 65. The results allow an organisation to identify areas most in need of improvement and these highlights will need to be included in the action plans required for submission for the ServiceMark accreditation.

The online process of collecting customer feedback is designed to be completed in less than six months and the organisations designated internal business coordinator will be able to start the process when the organisation is ready. Customer email addresses are required to be loaded into the survey system, however, data collection can be achieved via a web link which is communicated to customers through the

organisations usual channels of communication or if mailing addresses are known for customers a paper survey is available. A sample of the online questionnaire can be viewed at https://www.tlfsurveys.com/UKCSItestnew

The survey results are provided by the Institute and along with scores provided by the organisations customers against the five attributes the organisation can gauge its industry sector position against national competitors and get to know how close the business is to the ‘best in sector’; additional information provided includes:

• charts detailing the customer satisfaction index by question and by channel

• anecdotal feedback from responding customers

• complaints and loyalty satisfaction scores compared to your competitors.



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Satisfaction Trends

© Institute of Customer Service 2012. All rights reserved

72.0

74.1 75.2 75.6

76.7 77.3 77.4

70.2 70.0 69.4

70.0

71.9 72.3 72.4

79.9

60

65

70

75

80

85

Jan-‐09

Jul-‐09

Jan-‐10

Jul-‐10

Jan-‐11

Jul-‐11

Jan-‐12

Customer Sa,sfac,on Index

Sector

UKCSI Overall

Sample company

Customer Satisfaction (CSI)


54.3

63.5

72.4

75.2

76.4

77.1

78.4

79.9

72.4

77.4

50.0 55.0 60.0 65.0 70.0 75.0 80.0 85.0 90.0 95.0 100.0

Company A

Company B

Company C

Company D

Company E

Company F

Company G

Sample company

Sector

UKCSI Overall

Satisfaction Trends

Customer Satisfaction (CSI)

Sample Report


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Customer Satisfaction (CSI) by channel and Channel split

The proportion of customers using each channel for their interaction, for this sector


In wriJng 16.0%

In person 7.0%

Website 10.0%

Phone 67.0%

80

79

74

68

75

77

65

65

78

83

79

81

50 55 60 65 70 75 80 85 90 95 100

In person

Website

Phone

In wriJng

Sample company

Sector

UKCSI overall

Customer Satisfaction Questions by Channel


1.0 2.0 3.0 4.0 5.0 6.0 7.0 8.0 9.0 10.0

ReputaJon of the organisaJon Being treated as a valued customer

Product/service range Product/service quality

Product reliability Quality of informaJon/advice

Handling of enquiries Being kept informed

Ease of doing business Billing

Price/cost Ease of finding what you want (website)

The check out process (website) Availability of support (website)

On Jme delivery (website) CondiJon of delivered goods (website)

Sa,sfac,on (website)

Sector

Sample Company

1.0 2.0 3.0 4.0 5.0 6.0 7.0 8.0 9.0 10.0

ReputaJon of the organisaJon Being treated as a valued customer

Product/service range Product/service quality

Product reliability Quality of informaJon/advice

Handling of enquiries Being kept informed

Ease of doing business Billing

Price/cost The ease of ge_ng through (phone)

Helpfulness of staff (phone) Competence of staff (phone)

On Jme delivery (phone) CondiJon of delivered goods (phone)

Sa,sfac,on (phone)

Sector

Sample company

Customer Satisfaction Questions by Channel

Customer Satisfaction (CSI) by channel and Channel Split


The UKCSI is also available if your organisation has multiple sites; this will enable you to score and benchmark results from customers on a regional basis to enable you to benchmark individual areas or groups of business units against each other and against your total business. The UKCSI process and report acts as a progress monitor when repeated over time.

Frequently Asked Questions

1. How many customers need to respond to the UKCSI Business Benchmarking survey?

The responses from 100 customers are included to produce an accurate representation of their views. There is the opportunity to replicate the survey on a regional basis to reflect specific areas of your business whereby you are trading UK wide or have regional variations in your trading patterns. Alternatively you may wish to simply have extra responses if you have a customer base which is particularly large and diverse.

2. What is the rationale for 100 customer responses? Are there any statistics which reinforce that 100 is a significant sample?

100 responses was chosen as an appropriate number to deliver a balance between reliability and a sample size that is easy for most organisations to achieve. It provides a margin of error in the region of +/- 2 to 2.5 points on the customer satisfaction index. A larger sample size of 200 would provide a margin of error of +/- 1.5 to 2.

.

3. What are the results benchmarked against?

The results are benchmarked against your chosen sector and are taken from the bi-annual consumer feedback survey which forms the national UKCSI results.

4. How many customers email addresses are required to achieve the required number of responses for the survey?

Initially you are asked to supply up to 2,000 customer email addresses to the Institute’s research agency. The agency will contact your customers on your behalf asking them to complete the survey via an online link or if you wish you can send the link out to your customers directly.

5. What if our organisation only has a small number of customers and cannot produce a sample of 100 respondents, is there a minimum quantity the we should aim to achieve?

In order to complete the UKCSI results you will need to provide addresses for as many customers as possible with a view to analysing as many respondents that reply. The main thing that determines the robustness of the data is the absolute size of the sample, rather than the percentage number of customers responding. It will be important to discuss requirements with the Institute to understand the volume of customers to calculate the required responses and still deliver a reliable and statistically accurate result.


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UKCSI Business Benchmarking