Customer Experience - Research & Insights

Private Sector

At one time going down to the shops was the only way for consumers to do their shopping, nowadays customers can choose from online with mail delivery to a physical store to talking to a call centre. And it’s not always the retailer or bank providing all the service – increasingly customers are serving themselves. But what impact does this have on their experience as customers, and their relationship with retailers, banks and insurance companies?

Fujitsu set out to answer just that question, talking to more than 2500 consumers across Europe. The purpose of this research was to:

• Assess the impact of self-service channels on the experience of customers in financial services and retail.
• Evaluate how this impacted customer loyalty and retention.
• Understand how financial services and retail organisations are implementing self-service channels and what impact they believe they are having on customer experience.
• Compare and contrast the consumer and business perspective.

Public Sector

The commercial need to focus on the quality of customer experience is obvious. Consumers have a choice about where they spend their money and a different service experience can win more business and greater profits. The rationale for the Public Sector is less obvious. But designing the ‘right’ experience is essential if citizens are to develop the trust required to accept information sharing as well as to facilitate efficient interaction.

Public Sector are definitely not being left behind – as local authorities and central government continue to seek to improve the experience of citizens when they interact with government services.

They do face some different challenges – not least delivering services across the whole population as well as obliging the unwilling to accept such services as taxation and qualification to undertake day to day activities such as driving or operating their businesses.

Clearly the need for security is also paramount as customers expect much higher standards of protection from abuse such as identity theft and fraud. Given the volume of face-to-face and telephone based transactions, we believe that a critical component in creating a positive experience today is the front-line staff working for the service providers.

This led us to undertake further research on what factors help and hinder front-line staff deliver a service they feel is positive for the citizen and helped us identify the importance of the service delivery experience to the morale and job satisfaction of front-line staff as well as to their ability to deliver effective services efficiently. Our research was undertaken between July and December 2007, by the independent research company GfK NOP.

As part of our on-going commitment to help our clients better serve their customers, we have undertaken a research project across the UK to gain further insight into a variety of areas that affect Public Sector customer service delivery, including:

• how do experiences in the private sector affecting expectations of public sector service?
• how can government deliver service in the right way to those who need it most, encouraging the capable and independent to serve themselves?
• what are the implications for government as it designs, buys and operates its service delivery infrastructure?