EPSI Rating – International Benchmark trends for Customer Satisfaction and Consumer Sentiment monitoring
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In the following we report the main results by country and industry/ sector for the EPSI studies in fall 2008 (the dominant part of interviews done September to December 2008) as well as results on the development of the consumer sentiment during this period. The current results are compared with previous years whenever possible (for more details, see the 2007 EPSI Pan European benchmark report). |
Harmonized questionnaires for the empirical work are developed within the EPSI-initiative. Data collection is done based on telephone interviews to more than 750,000 respondents in year 2008 (both final consumers and corporate customers). |
International comparisons and benchmarks
- the take away
Customer satisfaction and perceived quality are measured in all Nordic and Baltic countries, as well as in a number of other European countries (like Russia, UK, Czech Republic and Greece). A number of changes in national EPSI and Consumer Sentiment Index results may be observed this year:
| The most of observed countries demonstrate decreasing customer satisfaction during the last year - with Sweden, Czech Republic and Russia as positive exceptions. The least satisfied customers live in Iceland, Estonia and Norway. The happiest customers enjoy staying in Lithuania, Finland and Greece. More satisfied customers occu-rred to react more strongly to | economic slump: their satisfaction drop is deeper in comparison with less happy customers. Greece, Estonia and Latvia present the biggest drop down in customer satisfaction in 2008. The gaps between European countries customer satisfaction continue to reduce during the recent years. Datacom industry has a very impressive positive trend while the trend for retail trade is more negative. The score for banking has slightly impro- |
ved, mobile telecom and general insurance did not change this year. Tryg Vesta has the most satisfied customers generally among general insurance companies with operations that are included in the EPSI measurement in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden. TeliaSonera with measured operations in Sweden, Finland, Norway, Denmark and all Baltic States come on top in the Telecom sector. |
Citizens of Denmark, and especially of Russia, have the most optimistic outlook at their respective national economy for the coming year 2009, while other nationalities are much more sceptical. People, living in Denmark and Russia, have the highest expectation on their own economic situation for 2009. The large positive gap between the general and own economy is indicated for people in all observed countries. People are more optimistic in assessing their own economic future than their national economies perspectives. |
EPSI by country and industry
Table 1: Satisfaction score by country and year according to EPSI
Picture 1 EPSI Customer Satisfaction Rating 2008
The satisfaction results are reported on the scale 0 – 100, where 0 means that all respondents give the supplier the lowest score, and 100 that all respondents score the supplier with the highest score for all measured variables. The indices refer to the national average based on measurement of all private and corporate customers. However, customers are different, and the levels differ in all countries between socio-economic groups as well as geographically. On average females are people living in rural areas (smaller communities) more satisfied than males and people in large metropolises. In the same was, satisfaction tend to increase with age. More about differences in satisfaction are reported in the national press releases.
The situation varies slightly between countries as to which sectors/industries are at top and which are lagging behind. In the following graph the overall scoring of some of the different industries are recorded year by year. It is seen that the DataCom industry has a positive trend while the trend for retail trade is more negative, see Graph 2.
In year 2008, there are in total 12 countries included in the measurement for banks. Here Customer satisfaction by country varies from 69.0 (Norway) to 81.5 (Lithuania). For the first time also the UK has been included into this measurement. The UK national score for final consumers is 72.3 and for corporate customers 68.5 and thus falls a bit below the overall GDP-weighted index for the Pan European Region studied (at the same time it should be noted that the UK-survey was taken later than most of these in other countries – thus when the financial crisis has transplanted further into the national economies, see below.
For the other industries reported above, the number of countries included vary between 10 and 8.
Multinational companies/groups
In all the common industries in the studied countries there are multi-national companies that can be compared for the general performance in different markets. A study has now been made between companies operating (with a significant market share) in three or more different countries. For the respective sectors considered (bank, insurance and telecom/Datacom) the following results are obtained.
Consumer Sentiment benchmarks
From year 2004 also questions about the consumer sentiment (how the consumers perceive the overall economic future the next 12 months, and how they perceive their own future economic situation).
These measures aim at giving an indication of how the demand will develop in the economy during the coming year. The higher score (between 0 – 100), the more optimistic are the individuals.
During the Fall 2005 - 2008, the following overall scores were obtained (the higher score the more positive future perception). The results for the respective year are based on measurement during September to December. It is possible to also split by month (as the number of observations are very high) in order to also trace short-term changes in this crucial business-cycle index.
The anticipations by final consumers for the respective national economy in the coming year are illustrated in Graph 3, below. The estimates labelled 2007 refer to how the consumers expect the next year 2008, and 2008 ones mark respective assessments of 2009 perspectives.
Picture 2. EPSI National economic outlook Rating 2008
For the own economy, the following results, Graph 4, are obtained in terms of expectations on the coming year. The estimates labelled 2007 refer to how the consumers expect the next year 2008, and 2008 ones mark respective assessments of 2009 perspectives.
Graph 4
The relationship between the assessment of the overall national economic future and the perspective for the own economic/financial situation is illustrated below for based on the current study late 2008. This gives an indication on possible differences in assessment by country.
These leading indicators for the economic development are regularly measured also in the future and reported in conjunction with EPSI-studies. This means that EPSI Rating will supply an index system for performance assessment on a regular basis.
Table 2 Consumer Sentiment Index, EPSI 2005-2008
The scores for UK 2008 (taken later than most other countries) are:
| General Economy | 25.3 |
| My own Economy | 37.1 |
This means that the perception of the future economic development according to the UK final consumers lays somewhere in the middle of the panorama.
Beneficiaries from EPSI
Information on customer satisfaction is needed for better policy and decision-making on all levels of society, including:
| More detailed results for different countries are available on the respective national EPSI web-sites. Please see www.epsi-rating.com for links to the different country press releases (public domain). | |
EPSI Rating EPSI Research Services Ltd, 33 St. James´s Square, London SW1Y4JS, England |
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