Customers of car manufacturers are still mainly happy with the service they receive, according to a major UK survey.
The automotive sector remains third best of 12 private and public sectors in the latest national measure of customer satisfaction by the Institute of Customer Service (ICS).
Research for its UK Customer Satisfaction Index (UKCSI) shows “an impressive” majority of buyers and users were pleased, giving an index rating of 76 out of 100 improving one point on the last results in January.
The online poll asked 12,000 people to rate how well companies and organisations performed in key areas such as complaint handling, professionalism, quality and competence and friendliness of staff.
Automotive was only one point behind retail (non-food) in the ‘league table’ of sectors, with services again coming top.
Within the automotive sector Volvo came top of the 14 manufacturers surveyed, with Mercedes Benz and BMW/Mini once more second and third. But the difference between them was so fractional that all three registered 81.
Bottom was again Renault on 70, with Nissan and Fiat, both on 73, next.
But ICS executive director Robert Crawford says even the comparatively low scorers still did as well as, or better than, the best in some other sectors.
“The automotive sector has again been an impressive performer,” he adds, “scoring consistently well across the board with customers thinking highly of it in all aspects.”
The index - the most comprehensive measure of customer satisfaction in the UK - shows car manufacturers come second only to retailers (non-food) where dealing with complaints is concerned and they also do well on customer loyalty.
ENDS 01 July 2008
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Notes to editors:
ICS is the professional body for customer service whose primary purpose is to lead and raise customer service performance and professionalism.
The ICS completed a major piece of research into what matters most to customers. There are 20 individual factors that can be grouped into five attributes: professionalism, problem solving, timeliness, quality/ efficiency and being easy to do business with.
The full research, including how these service priorities relate to each other and the extent they vary by sector and geography, are detailed in the report customer priorities: what customers really want which is available to editors free of charge from ICS by emailing caroline@gravitaspr.co.uk
This research forms the basis of the UKCSI questionnaire which is a self-completion, web-based survey repeated every six months. Results are determined on a geographically and demographically representative sample of UK adults and data is collected for all organisations with a high market share in each segment of the private sector and the main players in the public sector. This latest UKCSI is based on a sample of 12,000 adults surveyed during May and June 2008.
The UKCSI is produced from the scores received back from the survey asking customers to rate, on a scale of 1-10, their experience of customer service. The questionnaire is based on the 20 factors determining the quality of customer service, and measured across 12 business sectors.
Each of these factors is weighted according to how important customers said they were in the ICS research Customer priorities: what customers really want and 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 - and these are taken into account in the calculation of the UKCSI. This makes the scores exceptionally robust as they are not simply a percentage of respondents who answered a question in the positive or negative – they are derived from a weighted index of multiple questions.
The UKCSI has been welcomed by BSI British Standards. It says: “We believe it is an important step in improving customer satisfaction in the UK as well as a useful tool for consumers and business. Customer satisfaction is a key area of standardisation for BSI and our own work in this area potentially assists organisations to improve their position in the index.”
More information is available at ukcsi.com which details the full methodology of the UKCSI and gives additional information on the results within each of the 12 sectors.