Customer satisfaction down for the first time in four years

SINGAPORE — Customers were, on the whole, less satisfied with service they got last year — the first time this was so after four straight years of improving sentiments.

Data collected by the Institute of Service Excellence at the Singapore Management University showed overall satisfaction levels dipping 0.93 points to 70.2 points (out of 100), partly caused by poorer performances from the finance and insurance (down 1.44 points), as well as healthcare (down 1.42 points) sectors. Under the finance and insurance sector, customer reviews for life insurance worsened the most (by 3.01 points), followed by health and medical insurance, and banks.

Mr Chen Yongchang, who is the lead researcher of the Customer Satisfaction Index of Singapore (CSISG), said the sector has to fare better at “important touchpoints”, such as their personal bankers and branches, if they want customers to walk away happy. The CSISG is gross-domestic-product-weighted, meaning movements in satisfaction levels in the finance and insurance sector — which contributes 52.7 per cent of GDP — have a significant bearing on the final score.

Healthcare, which accounts for 8.1 per cent of GDP, saw the sharpest drop in satisfaction with dental and traditional Chinese medicine clinics. The continued favourable showing by polyclinics — despite lower happiness with wait times; particularly among patients who had not made appointments — could not pull up the sector’s rating.

Noting that appointment-making has an impact on patients’ expectations, Mr Chen said: “It would seem like a win-win to encourage as many patients as possible to make appointments prior to visiting the polyclinics.” The other sector that showed lower satisfaction levels was private education, which dropped 2.5 per cent. Five sectors recorded higher scores last year compared to 2014, with the food and beverage sub-sector showing the biggest improvement. Other sectors that saw an increase in its ratings are public education, info-communications, retail and tourism. Three sectors in the survey — air transport, land transport and logistics — were only introduced last year and do not have benchmark comparisons.

The latest CSISG recorded around 42,500 unique responses covering 2,330 companies in 11 industry sectors.