The national customer satisfaction level rose year-on-year, driven by improvements in the Finance & Insurance and Healthcare sectors. Of the eleven sectors measured in 2016, all but the Logistics and Private Education sectors registered year-on-year increases in score.
The Finance sector scored 72.4 points, where the Banks scored 72.9 points (+1.75 points/+2.5%), an improvement from 2015. The improvement is underpinned by higher scores registered for perceived quality and perceived value.
Top ranking entities in Banks include DBS (73.1), OCBC (72.9) and Maybank (72.5).
Credit Cards as a sub-sector was introduced for the first time into the CSISG in 2016. The sub-sector scored 70.7 points, with Citibank, American Express and DBS/POSB leading the pack in rankings. Top attributes impacting satisfaction ratings for Credit Cards include ‘Merchant tie-ups that meet my needs’, ‘Ease of reward redemption’ and ‘Flexibility of policies such as waiver of charges’.
Within the Healthcare sector, there was an improvement from the year before with a score of 71.0 (+1.40 points/+2.0%). The increase in score was primarily led by improvements seen in the Private Hospitals (73.2 points, +1.21 points/+1.7%) and Restructured Hospitals (70.0 points, +1.39 points/+2.0%) sub-sectors.
“Looking at the customer journey undertaken at private and restructured hospitals, we see parallels in waiting time being singled out as the attribute with the poorest rating. Yet when we analysed the data further, we found that waiting experience was the attribute that had the most significant impact on customers’ perception of quality. This suggests that while shorter waiting times are welcomed at healthcare institutions, it was the waiting experience that was most important in determining how customers rate their satisfaction with healthcare providers,” added Mr Chen Yongchang, Head of Research and Consulting at ISE.
The study in the fourth quarter was conducted between October 2016 and January 2017. The latest results were based on a total of 9,402 surveys.
Transforming Service Experience through Human Centric Design
Prof. Sheryl Kimes started her keynote presentation by highlighting five fundamental but important questions that companies ought to ask themselves when adopting a human-centric approach to service experience design.
1. What do customers want?
2. How can you design the service to meet their needs?
3. How can you deliver it to them?
4. How can you compete?
5. How can you make money?
Using Khoo Teck Puat Hospital (KTPH) as a case study, Prof Kimes spoke about how the hospital was able to improve the issue of a bed shortage through a human centric design thinking process. By identifying the problem first, KTPH realised that the bed shortage was due to an increasing number of repeat patients who were older. They would return to the hospital because it presented a better environment to live in than at home. By understanding what their patients wanted and improving the service delivery to meet the needs of their patients, the hospital was able to achieve a 67% reduction in admissions and savings of $5000 per patient.
Prof Kimes also highlighted the redesign of all of the Ministry of Manpower’s touchpoints around acquiring a new work pass—from the letters applicants receive to the website, physical space, and the interactions that occur there —as an example of a human-centric design approach. The use of design thinking led to a reduction in wait time that Prof Kimes said could be as long as 8 hours in some instance.
As a tip, “how might we” are three magic words that businesses and organisations can keep asking in order to improve their customer experience.
Panel Discussion with Prof Sheryl Kimes and Mr Raju Nair
Neeta: In the Q4 results release, the survey identified the perceived waiting time at both private and restructured hospitals to be a touchpoint that drove customer satisfaction down. DBS has faced similar issues in the past but has been successful in identifying and resolving this. How so?
Raju: What has changed is that customers are now in control of their waiting time. We found that customers didn’t like the uncertainty around what they were doing. So taking empathy in account, the SMS ‘Q’ process has really changed the perception of waiting. This process has given control back to the customer, which is what they want. The waiting experience has been transformed and customers can choose when they want to come in, how they get their queue number, and what they can do while they wait.
Another human-centric design that has positively changed the customer experience was the specially-equipped pop-up ATMs at community centres over the Lunar New Year period. DBS was the first bank to introduce this service in 2015. This initiative was the result of a human-centred design developed by a team who went through the process of empathising, ideating, prototyping and evaluating. “This changed the way customers experienced banking, and gave both control and convenience to the customer,” said Prof Kimes.
Neeta: We’ve seen how DBS has changed the waiting experience for its customers. How can we manage the waiting time and experience in hospitals?
Kimes: Unpredictability is a huge issue in healthcare. However there are things that can be done. Make appointments online, virtual queues and improving the waiting experience by distracting patients. Research and practice has shown that if you can create a more comfortable waiting experience and give patients control so that they can plan their movements around their appointment, (this will make them more satisfied).
Neeta: There’s a lot of discussion around the LEAN process especially in hospitals. Are we taking the LEAN idea too far?
Raju: People just focus too much on the “waste removal” aspect of LEAN, that’s what gets talked about the most however I don’t see a conflict. If you understand the principles of LEAN, you start with the customer, go to the place of action and observe and immerse yourself. DBS started with this process, and took a shift towards journey-based thinking to change where we start and how people perceive things. It’s very easy for a regulated industry to think of processes only. However, it is important that LEAN starts with the customer.
Mr Nair also recounted an issue that DBS had with their ATMs ‘eating’ 10,000 ATM cards every month. This was a costly problem that also affected the customer experience. After conducting many engineering studies and empathy studies by watching playbacks of videos, and role playing with cardboard ATM boxes, the team was able to identify the cause of the issue. They identified that the average customer would pause at the screen showing the account balance and tend to zone out, despite the 10 seconds of beeping to prompt them to remove their card. This would result in the card being eaten by the machine. With improvements, DBS was able to make a 66% reduction in the number of cards being eaten both thanks to the application of human-centred design. “It was a result of understanding the customer’s needs and beginning with empathy,” said Mr Nair.
Neeta: When running a business, how do you deal with a customer’s perception of their waiting time, versus their actual waiting time.
Kimes: This requires a change in organisational culture. To get everyone to buy in, we need to understand the issue first, then what the customers want, and lastly how do we go about implementing the change.
At DBS, CEO Piyush Gupta has openly said that the customer experience is a proxy of the organisation’s culture change program. “Every organisation has people who has great ideas, the challenge lies in implementation. It’s about interdisciplinary collaboration, the ability to align purpose, and then focus the outcome around the customer. This only happens when people develop a shared language and purpose around the culture of an organisation,” said Mr Nair.
In 2010, the bank formed a Customer Experience Council chaired by CEO Piyush Gupta, where heads from every department in each country, meet each quarter to make customer experience a priority by participating actively in customer journey work groups. Today, every managing director is involved in the customer or employee journey to ensure they learn by doing, and by immersing themselves in the process, they can appreciate it.
Neeta: There is so much competition around, and everyone is undifferentiated. If we keep doing more and more, will our customer get more demanding?
Kimes: Yes, however what is the alternative? If businesses don’t do anything, it will make a (negative) difference. The banks are going through sorts of initiatives in different ways. They have competition with each other and from the fintech industry, just like how the hotel industry who has AirBnB to think about. Customers will expect more but if you don’t do it, somoone else will come along and take care of it for you.
Neeta: With this new generation of consumers who some say are “infamously unloyal”, despite over exceeding in quality and value, loyalty is still declining. So is this concept of loyalty disappearing?
Raju: It’s definitely getting redesigned. The social dialogue happening in Singapore is about how jobs will be changing, and the continuous push to keep learning. The definition is changing, and people still value meaningful experiences. Digital technology has provided a level playing field, when you remain relevant, people will stay with you.
Kimes: My students value convenience and control. Constantly asking, “How come I have to do that?” is linked to convenience. Perceived control and perceived convenience are what matters most to consumers, and that should always be kept at the top of one’s mind.
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