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So the Institute of Customer Service has just published its latest Customer Satisfaction
Index results and I’m delighted to say that, again, customer satisfaction has increased
in the UK.
The survey actually is with over 26,000 consumers across a range of 13 different industry sectors.
The Institute has been undertaking the survey for just over two and a half years and during
that time the scores have actually continued to increase from 66 out of 100 to 75 out of
100. So what does this tell us?
Well, this actually, I believe, is good news for UK Plc because it is beginning to understand
the critical importance of putting customer service at the heart of its business.
Within those scores, however, there are a whole range of results. The leading sector
is the retail sector and there are a number of organisations that have scored over 80
within that sector. However, towards the end of the table are the utilities, communications
and public sector.
Now within those scores and within those ranges of scores, there are a number of organisations
that are performing at the very top and there are also organisations that are not performing
so well.
What the Institute is striving to do is to help really improve customer satisfaction
because we believe fundamentally that there is a clear link between return on investment
and the impact of customer service.
So we know that where organisations invest in their people, their processes, their strategy
and put customer service in the board room, it will impact effectively on the bottom line.
This is increasingly important. We have just gone through and will continue to go through
probably one of the worse economic times of our age and therefore having a focus on customer
service and doing everything we possibly can do to improve that is of significant importance.
We are now entering a period, particularly within the public sector, where we are going
to be seeing further cuts. And therefore with those cuts in mind, we need to drive greater
efficiencies in effectiveness.
We know from our members, and we have a number of leading organisations in the public sector,
where they are really striving for excellent customer service. They are making a difference
to their customers and then ultimately that is what we are all about, we are about improving
the performance of organisations so they can improve the performance for their customers.