UKCSI Business Benchmarking understanding customer priorities
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UKCSI Business Benchmarking
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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Customer Priorities
This 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 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 customer
Professionalism
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
Quality & Efficiency
Problem Solving Customer Priorities
Ease of doing Business
Timeliness
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 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
Achieving Customer Satisfaction
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
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 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:
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
• 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. 3
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UKCSI Business Benchmarking
Sample Report Satisfaction Trends Satisfaction Trends
85 79.9
80 Customer Sa,sfac,on Index
75.6
75.2
74.1
75
72.3
71.9
72.0 70.0
70.2
70
76.7
UKCSI Overall
72.4
70.0
69.4
Sample company
77.4
77.3
Sector
Jan-‐12
Jul-‐11
Jan-‐11
Jul-‐10
Jan-‐10
Jan-‐09
60
Jul-‐09
65
© Institute of Customer Service 2012. All rights reserved
Customer Satisfaction (CSI) Customer Satisfaction (CSI) 50.0
55.0
60.0
65.0
70.0
75.0
85.0
90.0
95.0
100.0
77.4
UKCSI Overall 72.4
Sector
79.9
Sample company
78.4
Company G
77.1
Company F
76.4
Company E
75.2
Company D 72.4
Company C 63.5
Company B Company A
80.0
54.3
© Institute of Customer Service 2012. All rights reserved
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Customer Satisfaction (CSI) by channel and Channel Split Customer Satisfaction (CSI) by channel and Channel split
In wriJng 16.0% In person 7.0% Website 10.0% Phone 67.0%
50
55
60
In wriJng
Phone
65
65
65
70
75
85
90
95
100
81
The proportion of customers using each channel for their interaction, for this sector
68 79
Sample company
74
Website
In person
80
77
75
83 79
Sector UKCSI overall
78 80
© Institute of Customer Service 2012. All rights reserved
Customer Satisfaction Questions by Channel Customer Satisfaction Questions by Channel Sa,sfac,on (website) 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)
Sector
Sample Company
Sa,sfac,on (phone) 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)
Sector
Sample company
© Institute of Customer Service 2012. All rights reserved
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UKCSI Business Benchmarking
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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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contact us at: Institute of Customer Service 2 Castle Court, St Peter’s Street, Colchester, Essex CO1 1 EW 01206 571 716 enquiries@icsmail.co.uk instituteofcustomerservice.com
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