Customers - What They Really, Really Want

UK consumers are poised to voice how happy or disgruntled they are through the UK Customer Satisfaction Index from the Institute of Customer Service.

Some 12,000 people will complete the bi-annual online questionnaire, ranking organisations across 12 major sectors on their service skills, creating an overall rating showing how they are being served. The results, issued on July 5, will rank the best and worst sectors, list the top organisations per sector and rank companies with most loyalty, referrals and repeat business in this national measure of customer satisfaction and its impact on our economic health.

The poll, run by the Institute of Customer Service (ICS), seeks to raise national customer service standards by contrasting the reality of front-line service in retail, banks, airlines, utilities, councils, hairdressers and others.

According to the ICS, the UK’s customer service standard-setting body, they expect the results will show that customers want more professionalism, better problem solving and complaints resolution, more efficiency and speed and organisations being easier to deal with.

Robert Crawford, ICS director, said: "This Index gives customers insights on the better players, helps companies to benchmark against the best and keeps board directors on their toes. I’m predicting that the best will get better and the worst will cling to bad habits: keeping customers dangling on the line or in the dark, being too quick to dismiss consumers with gripes and paying lip service to service. Last time the average satisfaction was 69 out of 100, but the best scored 90 and the lowest just 52."

"The UK Customer Satisfaction Index is unique in its scale, its detail and its cross sector comparisons", said Crawford. "A budget airline can learn from John Lewis about a mindset that costs little. Governments and economists are using the findings to predict growth, with customer satisfaction a major factor in consumer spending as two thirds of UK GDP comes from consumer spending."

The loyalty results indicate which organisations and sectors are the most stable and profitable, he said: "It costs ten times as much to recruit a new customer as it does to keep the one you already have."

Graham Clarke, director of executive MBA programmes at Cranfield School of Management said: "This is a good way to objectively assess the state of customer service in UK businesses and the public sector. It provides evidence for the link between service and competitiveness."

Sectors measured include retail, automotive, insurance houses, banks, leisure and tourism, transport, utilities, telecom, local government and government departments and agencies. It compares satisfaction levels in regions and pits England against Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.