Benchmarking user satisfaction: Summary for 2006

Produced by: Socitm Insight

Type: Reports

2006 marked the seventh year of our Benchmarking user satisfaction service. By the end of the year, we had completed 23 separate series, with 409 participants representing 206 organisations.

The priorities for the ICT service

By analysing the weighted gaps between importance and satisfaction, we look at the broad picture of issues facing ICT services in 2006, identifying priorities by their frequency of appearance as the top issue for any council. We compare these results for 2005, and analyse the underlying trends.

Good practice in customer service

We have selected four of the best performing councils during 2006 so that we can identify from them their approaches to success. The first two come from Wales; one has become the best in the UK outside shire districts, and the other has made a spectacular improvement. The second two come from shire districts in England; one has sustained high levels of satisfaction for four years and the other is a new participant in our service.

Conclusions

In describing the picture of the user experience in 2006, we identify two major issues common to most organisations that have participated - the need for proper training and full user involvement in new systems. These are now critical issues as organisations plan wholesale transformations of services, rather than incremental changes. We set out our recommendations for dealing with this management challenge.

Last modified: 19th January 2010