Singapore's 2015 customer satisfaction level dips

Singapore's national customer satisfaction level was lower in 2015, weighed down by the poorer performance from the finance & insurance and healthcare sectors in the fourth quarter.

The Customer Satisfaction Index of Singapore (CSISG), released on Wednesday by the the Institute of Service Excellence (ISES) at the Singapore Management University (SMU), showed that the national score last year was 70.2 points, down by 0.93 point.

In Q4 last year, the finance & insurance sector was 1.44 points lower to a score of 70.9.

The decline in this sector was led by year-on-year falls in the life insurance sub-sector, which dropped 3.01 points to 70.6.

This was followed by the health & medical insurance sub-sector, which scored 2.15 points lower to 70.2, and the banks sub-sector, which was 1.12 points lower to 71.1.

A common observation for the lower customer satisfaction levels across the finance & insurance companies was lower satisfaction with touchpoints, said ISES.

"For the banks sub-sector, satisfaction with ATMs, branches, credit cards, mobile apps, and personal bankers recorded lower year-on-year ratings. At the insurance companies, satisfaction with financial advisors and the contact centre had lower year-on-year ratings."

In the last quarter of 2015, the healthcare sector scored 69.6 points, down 1.42 points.

This was mainly due to lower scores in three of the five sub-sectors measured within it, said ISES.

The general practitioners sub-sector scored 69.4 points, a fall of 2.10 points. The other healthcare sub-sector, which comprised healthcare providers such as dental and traditional Chinese medicine clinics, scored 69.7 points, a fall of 2.47 points. The restructured hospitals sub-sector scored 68.6 points, a dip of 0.70 point, although the change was not statistically significant.

Of the nine other industry sectors measured earlier in 2015, performance was also generally lacklustre, even as the food & beverage and public education sectors recorded higher scores. The private education sector scored lower year-on-year while the info-communications, retail, and tourism sectors did not register substantial changes.

As the air transport, land transport, and logistics sectors were introduced in 2015, these do not have a year-on-year benchmark comparison.

The CSISG 2015 Q4 survey was conducted between October 2015 and January 2016, with more than 9,700 unique responses covering 622 companies and entities in the finance & insurance and healthcare sectors.

For the whole year, the CSISG study recorded 42,501 unique responses covering 2,330 companies in the 11 measured industry sectors.