ACE colleagues recently got together to discuss some of the tools, benefits and challenges of measuring customer satisfaction in the context of our ALBs delivering services for the public. Here we share a summary of the discussion.

Many organisations will have set up customer surveys with questions and some form of benchmark to measure customer satisfaction. It can however be a challenge to recognise what success looks like through these surveys, and have meaningful discussions with our respective boards regarding the results.

Some of the challenges include paying too much attention to relatively small changes in survey results, recognising where changes in response are in fact the result of wider changes in the operating environment beyond our direct control, and the fact that positive responses may be simply the result of favourable decisions say around funding from our organisation as opposed to its actual performance.

Clearly taking the time to get the questions and structure of the survey right is important to mitigate some of these risks. Putting in place a tolerance for variation in results should help those analysing results, such as board members, recognise whether trends in results are significant or perhaps just noise.

Some suggest that surveys are perhaps better at identifying issues that need addressing as opposed to demonstrating good performance. In addition, sometimes some of the most useful insight comes from breaking the results down, so for example from the perspective of diversity and inclusion you can identify if certain groups of people are more or less satisfied. Qualitative data can often be as powerful as the collated numbers and should be used to help understand the perception of our customers.

Finally, it was noted that a lot of the research in this area focuses on organisations selling products that the customers choose to want, whereas Arm’s Length Bodies are often providing services people haven’t chosen or at least have very different perspectives of what is acceptable. It is worth being mindful of this point as we look to compare our customer satisfaction with that of other organisations.