The Customer Satisfaction Index of Singapore (CSISG) is a landmark measure of customer satisfaction cutting across a variety of key sectors and sub-sectors in the services industry of Singapore. The study is produced and updated on an quarterly and annual basis
About CSISG
First launched in April 2008, the CSISG is an independent and qualitative indicator of the Singapore economy. It covers 8 core economic sectors, more than 20 sub-sectors and numerous companies from the Air Transport Finance, Food & Beverage, Info-communications, Insurance, Land Transport, Retail, and Tourism industries. This national barometer of customer satisfaction in the Singapore economy serves as an objective gauge of service competitiveness between businesses, industries, and even countries. It is a rigorous, objective and comprehensive assessment of Singapore's service levels, generating annual indices at the national, sectoral, sub-sectoral, and company levels. As it reports the overall customer satisfaction scores of every sector and sub-sector, including a ranking of the companies measured, the CSISG serves as an invaluable benchmarking tool across industries in the services sector. At the micro economic level, the CSISG offers businesses an objective appraisal of customer satisfaction levels of their company and competitive insights into best-in-class organisations industry-wide. The diagnostic capabilities of the CSISG model identify service attributes and drivers with the most significant impact on overall satisfaction, acting as a useful guide for organisations in the optimisation of resources to enhance satisfaction and loyalty.
CSISG General Methodology
The methodological foundations of the Customer Satisfaction Index of Singapore can be traced to the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI), developed by the National Quality Research Centre (NQRC) at the University of Michigan. The American Customer Satisfaction Index has been the standardised measure of customer satisfaction in the US economy since 1994.
The Customer Satisfaction Index of Singapore is based on econometric modelling of data obtained from interviews with actual users of products and services.
Respondents are surveyed on their consumption experiences and perceptions of a company and its goods and services. Having the frame of reference centred on the consumer abstracts away details of the particular sector, or sub-sector which the company represents for comparative benchmarking.
In line with the Customer Satisfaction Index of Singapore model, customer satisfaction is determined by customer expectations, perceived quality and perceived value. The overall satisfaction score for a company indicates its performance on these three customer satisfaction drivers.
The Customer Satisfaction Index of Singapore further measures the outcomes of customer satisfaction or dissatisfaction, including incidences of complaints and customer loyalty. The scores are then aggregated and reported on a 0 to 100 scale based on these factors, to quantify customers' cumulative experience, expectations and opinions of a company's products and services.
CSISG Structural Model
With the help of the NQRC, the structural model in the figure above was estimated on the survey data to generate the Singapore satisfaction scores which were then analysed by the Institute of Service Excellence. These scores range from 0 to 100 with higher numbers representing better performance. This diagram shows the relationship between the factors that drive customer satisfaction (i.e., customer expectations, perceived quality, and perceived value) as well as the consequences of satisfaction (i.e., customer complaints and loyalty).
In the CSISG model, each company's satisfaction score is an accumulation of their customer's expectations and opinions. Having the frame of reference centred on the consumer abstracts away details of the particular sector or sub-sector the company happens to be in. This allows us to perform comparisons between companies in different sectors.
