85 per cent of business leaders do not rate their organisations highly at delivering high quality customer service
Senior business leaders across the UK believe their organisations could improve their customer service.
According to "Captains of Industry", an annual survey of more than 100 of the most senior figures in top UK companies, 85% of business leaders do not rate their organisations highly in terms of consistently delivering high quality customer service.
Less than half (48%) of Captains personally interact with their key customers on a monthly basis and 7% admitted to speaking to their key clients less than once a year. Yet, in over half of our Captains' organisations it is the Chief Executive Officer who holds ultimate responsibility for customer experience.
Captains’ ideas for acting on customer feedback centre around responding and utilising it more effectively, as well as engaging and listening to customers more. One Captain noted that:
“We need to listen and be much more open to looking at things in a different way rather than looking at things in a polarised way, around our policies. We need to look at the world not just through our eyes but through the eyes of our customers.”
Over half of Captains (55%) use surveys, be it NPS, satisfaction or other varieties, as KPIs for customer experience and feedback. However, the survey suggests that these are not used to their full potential. One-third of Captains said they are not discussing their customer experience and feedback KPIs at board level on a regular basis.
Technical note
Respondents are executive board-level directors and chairmen. Companies are from the top 500 industrials by turnover and the top 100 financial companies by capital employed. A total of 102 respondents took part with interviews conducted from September to December 2015. 97 interviews were conducted face-to-face and 5 by telephone.
