Overall customer satisfaction in the automotive sector has increased over the past year, continuing the ongoing upward trend in satisfaction since 2011, reveals the UK Customer Satisfaction Index (UKCSI), published today by the Institute of Customer Service. The UKCSI gives the UK’s automotive industry an overall customer satisfaction rating of 78.9 out of 100, 0.6 points higher than its July 2015 score.
The data offers important insights into key metrics, including complaints, trust and changing channel use. This year, the industry has improved on most complaint handling measures, apart from satisfaction with complaint outcomes. The sector has also experienced increases in over the phone measures and a growth in email use, which now accounts for 12% of all interactions.
Whilst generally outperforming the UKCSI, the sector performs below average for most online experience measures. Compared to two years ago, a higher proportion of automotive customers prioritise excellent service at a higher price over ‘no frills’ service at lower prices. 32% of customers expressed a preference for the highest levels of customer service, even if it costs them more, compared to 27% in July 2014. The UK average is 28%. Eight organisations within the sector have improved, with five demonstrating a fall in customer satisfaction. Land Rover tops the tables as the highest scorer in the industry, with Suzuki as the most improved.
The UKCSI is the Institute of Customer Service’s national measure of customer satisfaction based on 10,000 consumer responses. It provides insights into the state and direction of customer satisfaction at a national level, across 13 key sectors and for individual organisations. The results found a clear link between organisations getting customer experiences right first time and achieving high scores for satisfaction.
On average the UKCSI score was 82.7 for those organisations where customers said they had issues resolved immediately, but when this did not happen the score drops to an average of 59. This correlation can be seen in the automotive sector, where customers rate companies as getting it right first time in 75% of cases and the sector received an overall rating of 78.9.In many sectors there has been an increase in the score for customer effort, in other words, customers said they had to expend more effort in dealing with organisations than they did a year ago. In the automotive sector, 39% of people say that it has taken them more than two complaints to get a problem fixed.
The extra staff time spent on repeat customer contact to resolve issues is arguably time which could be better spent, with businesses set to save money on staff hours if a focus is placed on getting it right first time. Across all sectors, the research also reveals that many people don’t make the effort to complain to organisations if they do have a problem; 24% of people who experienced an issue did not report it. Not thinking their complaint would make a difference was by far the most common reason for not reporting, cited by 51% of people.The UKCSI also revealed new evidence of the tangible business benefits of good customer service for all sectors.
The relationship between the highest levels of customer satisfaction and trust has strengthened in the past year, with 96% of customers who rate an organisation nine or ten out of ten for customer satisfaction also giving the highest levels of trust.
Jo Causon, CEO of The Institute of Customer Service, comments: ”Getting it right first time’ has to be a prerequisite for any organisation. Customers expect to be dealt with quickly and competently, as soon as they start to feel let down or ignored, their trust is lost. It’s encouraging to see the automotive sector is making progress, but prevention is always better than cure, so the industry should take note of the areas which need to be focused on. Efficiency, effectiveness and empathy are key, and organisations should always follow up with customers to ensure that the problem is resolved.”
Notes to editors:
About The Institute of Customer Service, The Institute of Customer Service is the professional body for customer service delivering tangible benefit to organisations and individuals so that our customers can improve their customers’ experience and their own business performance. The Institute is a membership body with a community of over 500 organisational members – from the private, public and third sectors, and over 3,000 individual memberships. For more information about the Institute of Customer Service go to www.instituteofcustomerservice.com
About UKCSI
UKCSI (UK Customer Satisfaction Index) is The Institute of Customer Service’s national measure of customer satisfaction. It provides insights into the state and direction of customer satisfaction at a national level, across 13 key sectors and for individual organisations. UKCSI was launched by The Institute of Customer Service in 2008. It provides a unique way of measuring the current customer satisfaction of UK customers, as well as trends over time. The January 2016 UKCSI results included in this report are based on 39,000 survey responses. Each response is a completed online questionnaire relating to the customer experience with a specific organisation. These responses are provided by 10,759 individual customers. The respondents are representative of the UK adult population, according to region, age and gender.
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