Telecoms customers are much happier with the service they receive, according to a major UK survey.
The telecommunications sector still remains in the bottom half of 12 private and public sectors in the latest national measure of customer satisfaction by the Institute of Customer Service (ICS).
It’s not all doom and gloom though, research for its UK Customer Satisfaction Index (UKCSI) online poll of 12,000 people shows telecoms have performed “fantastically well” in all of its key priority areas.
Marked improvements in areas such as helpfulness and continuity of staff, reputation, speed of service and handling of enquiries have boosted the overall index rating to 66 out of 100 compared with 63 last time.
Trailing behind telecoms in the bottom three sectors are utilities with no improvement on last time with 64 and local government also on 64.
Services once again came top, increasing three points to 79, with retail (non-food) second on 77 and automotive close behind on 76.
Within the telecoms sector O2 have moved from second place to first on 72, next is T-Mobile now on 71 and in third is 3 who have increased a massive 12 points to 70 from 58 last time.
The majority of organisations have improved by at least four points, closing the gap between the best and the worst.
“This goes to show that organisations are realising the only differentiator left in UK business today is customer service. Products can be copied and costs matched, so service is the only aspect where companies can gain an edge,” said Robert Crawford, ICS executive director.
“When people have a finite amount of money they will be more careful to spend it where they are treated well.
“Customers are much more inclined to factor in service when it comes to making purchase decisions.”
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.