The Customer Satisfaction Question Bank represents a new standard for customer satisfaction and experience measurement of Scottish local government services. The need for this emerged from research commissioned jointly in 2008 by the Improvement Service and Consumer Focus Scotland. The research revealed a strong appetite across Scottish local government to collaborate to develop a common and consistent approach, and so the Question Bank has been designed to:
- offer robustness, consistency and comparability
- be cost effective and simple to implement
- provide clear indications of areas for improvement
- enable tracking of year on year changes.
The Customer Satisfaction Question Bank is:
- a set of tried and tested questions
- a defined answer scale
- based around five key drivers of customer satisfaction: delivery, timeliness, information, professionalism and staff attitude, identified by MORI in a 2004 report
- mapped to Customer Service Excellence and PSIF customer evidence requirements
- complimented by a comprehensive User Guide and other support materials that provide a step-by-step guide to designing, implementing, analysing and reporting data from a customer satisfaction survey
Argyll & Bute, Aberdeen City, North Lanarkshire, North Ayrshire, Perth & Kinross and Dundee City Councils are piloting the Question Bank during October and November 2009, across a range of services, and using differing methodologies, to check its fitness for purpose.
Following the pilot's evaluation, the Customer Satisfaction Question Bank will be available at the end of 2009.
The Question Bank has been developed in partnership with a number of Scottish councils, the Improvement Service, Scottish Government, Consumer Focus Scotland, Audit Scotland, LARIA in Scotland and Glasgow Housing Association.
SOLACE (Scotland) strongly supports this move towards developing consistency and robustness with this important indicator of performance. In addition, Audit Scotland's latest report of local authority performance has cited specifically the value of this project in bringing consistency of application to an important indicator of performance.
For more information, please contact Carrianne Hall, The Improvement Service (pilot co-ordinator) on 01506 775582.
