Business Benchmarking ⋆ Institute of Customer Service

The customer perspective: shaping your customer service strategy

Measuring and benchmarking is an important step in developing your customer service strategy or taking it to the next level. Business Benchmarking is The Institute’s independent survey of your customers helping you to measure your customer satisfaction, identify strengths and areas for development, and benchmark your performance with other organisations either in or outside your sector.

Business Benchmarking

The questions in the Business Benchmarking survey are aligned to UK Customer Satisfaction Index (UKCSI) – the national measure of customer satisfaction – which enables results to be benchmarked against the latest UKCSI results.

Business Benchmarking is exclusively available to organisational members. As part of membership, you can carry out regular surveys to measure improvements over time.

Find out more about our new Business Benchmarking Platform here.

Find out about Membership

Insights delivered by Benchmarking

Measure key customer satisfaction metrics (NPS, Customer Effort)

Identify and leverage areas of strengths

Understand what your customers want you to improve

Customer satisfaction by channel

Benchmark with others in your sector and outside

Get a full analytical report of your benchmarking results

Why is it important?

Understand where you are now and against where you want to be
Identify what’s working well and areas for improvement
Inform your customer service strategy with your customers’ priorities
Improve productivity and performance using action plans to address areas for improvement based on what matters most to your customers
Gain strategic advantage and focus on key capabilities critical to success

What is involved?

You must first nominate an internal business co-ordinator to liaise with us
Timeframes are up to you, to start online whenever you’re ready
Once registered on the web portal, you will be able to access your bespoke survey link
Once registration is complete, an email will be sent to all customer contacts inviting them to complete the questionnaire
During the process, customer contacts will receive three emails: the initial invitation and two reminders
Your nominated internal business co-ordinator will be able to check the progress of the survey at any time through the online portal
Finally, an action plan will be created with the support of your local Institute account director

The Process

Customers are surveyed using the same questions as the UKCSI in both a B2C or B2B environment

The top 20 customer priorities are collated and scored according to customer responses

The results are charted: 100 responses or more in a B2C environment (200 recommended), 70 or more in a B2B environment

An overall customer satisfaction rating is awarded, benchmarked and by your industry sector

Results can be compared with the latest UKCSI results

You are licensed to download all the data on your organisation, and from one sector (subject to restrictions on use)

Bespoke Business Benchmarking

Alongside the core UK Customer Satisfaction Index (UKCSI) benchmark questions it’s also possible to work with our Research and Insight team to include additional bespoke questions to give specific insight about your customers. We can also help you frame survey questions and reporting requirements to maximise the value of your benchmarking survey. Contact us or your Client Development Director to find out more.

Your Business Benchmarking Journey