UK Customer Satisfaction Index (UKCSI)

The UKCSI includes an index score for organisations and sectors based on customers’ responses across a range of metrics. The UKCSI also features insight about customer satisfaction with different channels and types of experience and in some cases different types of product or service.

We also highlight evidence about the relationship between customer satisfaction and trust, reputation, recommendation and financial performance.

The UKCSI is based on the top customer priorities described in the report “Customer Priorities: What Customers Really Want”.

The questions in the UKCSI are based on customers’ priorities – the attributes of customer experience with organisations that are rated as most important by customers. The Institute conducted recent research into customers’ priorities to ensure that the UKCSI remains a relevant and essential benchmark. The output of this research is new insight into both customers’ stated priorities, as well as “softer” factors which may not necessarily have a high stated importance, but nevertheless show a strong relationship with customer satisfaction.

As well as reporting an overall index score based on customers’ responses across the full range of measures, this report includes index scores for five distinct dimensions of the customer experience: Experience, Complaints Handling, Customer Ethos, Emotional Connection and Ethics.

Organisations use the UKCSI to identify emerging and long-term trends in customer experience. The UKCSI highlights the characteristics and differentiators of the highest performing organisations as well as key areas for improvement.

The UKCSI is designed not primarily as a league table but as an independent benchmark and source of knowledge to complement and enhance the insight that organisations already collect.

There are 13 sectors reports:

• Automotive
• Finance
• Insurance
• Leisure
• Public services (Local)
• Public services (National)
• Retail (Food)
• Retail (Non-food)
• Services
• Telecommunications
• Tourism
• Transport
• Utilities

UKCSI sector reports allow you to:

• benchmark customer satisfaction performance against other organisations in the sector on over 30 customer experience metrics
• analyse overall customer satisfaction, NPS, customer effort, trust, reputation
• link customer satisfaction to future buying behaviours, including consumers likelihood to repurchase, remain a customer and recommend
• identify what differentiates the highest and lowest performing organisations in each sector
• understand the latest evidence about drivers of complaints and satisfaction with complaint handling
• compare findings with your own customer surveys, business benchmarking surveys or voice of the customer analysis
• identify key areas of focus, create improvement plans and set measures.

The main UKCSI report on the state of customer satisfaction in the UK can be accessed here.

Institute organisational members are in addition entitled to a sector report with sector-specific insight and trends and metrics for organisations in the sector.

Members can also access a sector resource pack which contains key measures in spreadsheet format as well as additional sector-specific data and insight.

^{*Specific benefits vary by membership level}

Business Benchmarking is a measurement of customer satisfaction that your organisation can use to benchmark against leaders in your sector and beyond. Identify strengths and areas for development and benchmark your performance with other organisations. Access the Business Benchmarking page for more information.

Each UKCSI incorporates two sets of data to create a rolling measure of customer satisfaction.  Each UKCSI includes responses collected in March to April and September to October each year.

It is representative of the UK adult population by region, age and gender.

Customers are asked to rate their experience of dealing with a specific organisation in the previous three months.  Customers can only choose one organisation per sector but can complete the survey for up to five different sectors.  The UKCSI currently comprises of 45,000 total responses.

How the UKCSI score is calculated

The UK Customer Satisfaction Index (UKCSI) scores are expressed as a number out of 100.  The UKCSI score for each organisation is the average of all of its customers’ satisfaction scores for each of the metrics, multiplied by ten, with a weighting applied reflecting the priority score for each measure.  The sector score is the mean average of all responses for that sector, multiplied by ten.  The overall UKCSI is based on the mean average of each sector’s score.