The Institute of Service Excellence (ISE) at Singapore Management University (SMU) released the 2018 third quarter (Q3) Customer Satisfaction Index of Singapore (CSISG) results for the Food & Beverage (F&B) and Tourism sectors on 28 November 2018.
Both sectors registered statistically significant improvements in customer satisfaction compared to a year ago. The F&B sector climbed 3.5% year-on-year to score 74.2 points on a 0 to 100 scale. The Tourism sector recorded a relatively more modest 1.2% year-on-year improvement to score 75.1 points.
In both instances, these performances represented a fourth consecutive year of increase in customer satisfaction scores and the highest recorded scores in the 12-year history of the national CSISG study.
Food & Beverage Sector
The F&B sector comprises of four sub-sectors: Cafes & Coffee Houses, Fast Food Restaurants, Restaurants, and Snack Bars & Food Kiosks.
While each of these four sub-sectors notched higher scores year-on-year, measurable improvements were recorded for the Fast Food Restaurants and Restaurants sub-sector. Fast Food Restaurants scored 73.6 points, a 2.7% improvement, while Restaurants scored 74.4 points, a 4.0% improvement.
With the increased adoption of Self-order Kiosks at several fast food chains, a notable observation in the Fast Food restaurants sub-sector is: Customers that used these kiosks as their most frequent method to place their orders were found to have similar levels of customer satisfaction when compared to customers who most frequently place their orders via the traditional way, i.e., with a counter service staff.
In addition, the group of customers that frequent kiosks ordering rated a key metric ‘Ordering process is simple’ appreciably higher than customers ordering via the counter service staff.
“Further analysis showed that a simple ordering process was a significant driver of customers’ perceptions of quality at fast food restaurants,” said Mr Chen Yongchang, Head of Research and Consulting at ISE.
“The industry’s increased adoption of Self-order Kiosks appear to help simplify ordering processes and, if done well, will positively drive fast food customers’ dining experience over time,” suggested Mr Chen.
Tourism Sector
The Tourism sector comprises of the Attractions and the Hotels sub-sectors. Year-on-year, Attractions saw a measurable 1.1% improvement in customer satisfaction, scoring 74.1 points, while the Hotels sub-sector’s performance, at 75.3 points, remained statistically unchanged.
The Attractions sub-sector’s improved customer satisfaction levels came on the back of stronger year-on-year performances in 10 of the 13 measured quality drivers. These drivers include attributes such as the venue’s cleanliness, helpfulness of staff, and waiting times.
Additional analysis of the sub-sector also compared satisfaction levels of visitors that searched for information about the attraction prior to their visit against visitors who did not seek out any information: Visitors that searched for information were markedly more satisfied than those that did not. In fact, these visitors that did prior research also had notably higher scores in several other metrics recorded in the study, including predicted quality, perceived quality, perceived value, and loyalty.
“Getting information about an attraction prior to a visit helps the consumer curate the visit to suit his or her own needs,” remarked Ms Neeta Lachmandas, Executive Director of ISE.
“Attraction operators should take the opportunity to help information-seeking customers to shape and frame their expectations beforehand, setting the stage for these guests to experience the park or museum in the best possible way,” she concluded. The CSISG 2018 Q3 study was conducted between July and October 2018. A total of 6,900 respondents, comprising 3,060 locals and 3,840 tourists, were surveyed. For a full breakdown of the results, check out the Results Overview and Presentation.
Keynote Presentation
Prior to the results presentation, the Institute had the privilege to hear from Mr. Steen Puggaard as he shared his perspectives on providing exceptional service in a changing servicescape.
Steen has had a long career in consumer brands, particularly Food & Beverage and Franchising. He has spent almost 20 years in Asia Pacific with a focus in Southeast Asia. In his corporate experience capacity, he had taken on senior marketing and general management roles within Disney, MacDonald’s, Burger King, Baskin Robbins, The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf as well as Costa Coffee. He has also been involved with local and regional start-ups where he was part of the Les Amis Group spearheading “Lazy Gourmet”, a high-quality online food delivery-based model. In recent times, Steen helmed 4 Fingers Crispy Chicken as CEO where he scaled up its sales revenue from $2 million to $40 million in just 6 years with 30 outlets in 5 countries. Currently, Steen is operating partner at Archipelago Capital Partners.
Overarching Steen’s presentation, he emphasised the need for the services industry to monitor consumer spending trends and habits closely to ensure continuous relevance to customers. He highlighted this perspective with the following key pointers.
Download Keynote Presentation
The Importance of Brand Experience
Using the analogy of how the Disney Company forayed into developing economies, Steen shared that there is a distinctive value and pricing premium that brands offer to consumers. By simply placing Disney’s logo or characters onto tea cups or merchandising items, the price of these products can immediately command a 25% premium. Therefore, how you deliberately build and manage your brand can ultimately assist you to create more value based on your interactions and relationships with your customers.
Think of Outlets as “Venues” (Location + Event)
Steen perceives customer fronting outlets as “venues”. He defines venues as the location and what’s happening at that space. Often, most organisations overlook the importance of their outlets in customer engagement. They should deliberately try to build their brands in these premises and go beyond simply putting their logo on the shop front. There are many levers and opportunities whereby a business can accentuate their brand. Visual, sensorial, service proposition, and interactions are various aspects which can help brand building. What should customers see, hear, and smell when they step into your venue? How should you manage that to get people interested? Steen specifically highlights that the music selection offerings is a vital and significant element which can act as a pivotal energy builder behind brands.
Moments of Truth
Organisations should always review and assess what are the tools available to them to create these brand moments. By constantly analysing and dissecting these potential levers, businesses can better identify each moment and, as Steen would call them, the “moments of truth”. These moments of truth can then be mapped into the unique journey that you have with your customers. With reference to the Disney Experience (termed as the Disney Magic), Disney has charted no less than 1,483 magical moments based on their customers’ journey in relation to people, process, and place. These moments thus help them better understand the customer experience via their service priorities within safety, courtesy, efficiency, and showmanship.
Brands Create Value
Start with your Brand
Concluding the presentation, Steen continued to highlight the potential for businesses to create brand value, although patience and time are required. The benefits will outweigh the costs in the long run and when done successfully, the brand premium will enable businesses to bring in higher profits, increase and deepen customer’s share of wallet.
Technology as an enabler
In the face of e-commerce and home deliveries, Service will be seen as a key driver to differentiate your brand and proposition, if not, people will just stay home and not visit your retail premise. The use of technology can be enhanced internally to make your business more productive and ensure higher consistency. Externally, businesses should see how they can create new exciting customer journeys with their consumers.
Increasing service standards
Think about how your service employees can be redeployed to do new and valued added tasks with the help of technology. Technology should be used to free up people for more meaningful jobs. Complementing this is also consistently reassessing the compensation, benefits, and training of service employees to keep them happy and motivated.
For Steen’s presentation deck, please click here
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