Indicator shows healthy increase; cafes’ outperform
KUWAIT CITY, July 23: Service Hero, the region’s only consumer powered national customer satisfaction index based in Kuwait revealed today that the overall customer satisfaction rate in the country has seen a healthy increase. This announcement came as the company released the mid-year results of its annual “Customer Satisfaction Index” for Kuwait, which scored a total of 78.4 satisfaction rate based on a 100 point system, a three point increase from last years’ index in which Kuwait scored 75.4.
The index, which has been running in Kuwait since 2010, is an annual assessment of the factors driving customer satisfaction. It aims to set customer service standards in the region. The index carefully studies customers’ assessments of the services received in over 17 sectors.
Maintaining its top position, cafés scored an impressive satisfaction score of 84.1 out of 100 points, while casual dining kept its second place with a rate of 83.2 and automotive sales, scored 81.3. The worst performing industries, where customers are very frustrated, are internet service providers 66.9, mobile operators 70.4 and health clubs 74.2 points.
The results also reveal that customers’ expectations in Kuwait are higher at 84.1 in terms of anticipated standards before dealing with a company or brand while the actual service they receive is lower by 5.7 points at 78.4. This suggests that companies need to understand where they fall short on meeting expectations. The largest service gaps by dimension in the Service Hero Index are for Value for Money (-6.6 points), Product Quality (-6.2 points), Speed (-6.1 points) and Reliability (-6.1 points). Satisfaction was highest for Staff (80.1) and Reliability (79.6) and Value for Money as well as Website both scored lowest (75.6 and 75.4 points respectively).
Faten Abu-Ghazaleh, President of Service Hero explains “customers vary in both their expectations and satisfaction of the service they receive. The more exposed and sophisticated a customer is, the more likely they will be intolerant of poor service, and the harder it is to please them, which also affects their loyalty with brands. Companies need to understand the expectations and satisfaction levels of all their customer segments in order to understand how to best satisfy them.”
Continues Abu-Ghazaleh “working and rating companies over the years we notice that while they understand service excellence is important, few know exactly what do to enable it internally.” Service Hero has therefor launched a new index, the Culture of Excellence Index, to address this need. The new index measures how organized, clear and aligned a company is in providing excellent service and it is currently being offering and used by leading retail clients in Kuwait.
How the Customer Satisfaction Index works
The Service Hero Customer Satisfaction Index is an online survey where respondents vote directly on www.servicehero.com and rate the quality of service they receive in private sector companies. The index measures 10 key service attributes on a 10-point rating scale on a before and after basis. Scores are then converted using an algorithm to a 100 point system to make reporting the scores easier to understand. The key focuses are: staff attitude, speed, location, value, reliability, product quality, call center, website, comparison to an ideal, and likelihood to recommend. Based on this 100% customer derived input, the index computes overall scores for each company based on all the attributes. It measures them across key industry categories including mobile operators, internet service providers, electronics, furniture, banking (both Islamic and conventional), private hospitals, gyms, automotive (both new car purchase and car service), airlines and grocery stores, which are currently included for Kuwait. Amongst these industry categories are 310 Kuwait based brands which are automatically prelisted by the Service Hero index for their customers to rate their experiences with them.
Service Hero is the regional partner with the respected American Customer Satisfaction Index and also follows the research protocols of ESOMAR (European Society for Opinion and Market Research) to ensure adherence to international market research standards. The results Votes also provide industry averages and an overall country average which can be compared on a global scale. For this report, the Service Hero Index collected 5644 authenticated consumer voices, in Kuwait (for the Kuwait Index), covering 17 different business sectors. In Kuwait, the assessments were collected from a sample comprised of 37% Kuwaiti, 39% Arabs and Non-Arabs. Each category has a quota of 450 votes. The confidence level is 95% with an ± 2% error margin. A number of security measures were deployed of either technical nature to verify the authenticity of the voter, or later, at the data cleansing stage, to remove any suspicious data.