At the end of 2019, Ombudsman Services invited member companies to share their feedback about our services, from the communications they receive to the systems used when dealing with complaints.
This activity forms part of our customer experience strategy to allow us to review how we are performing, identify improvement opportunities and work together to improve the future of complaint handling.
Earlier this month, we shared our results with you through our Partners website and explained what action we have taken so far based on your feedback.
We plan to complete this feedback activity on a quarterly basis and so, our next survey results are now due. Given the unprecedented times we are all currently facing we initially put this quarter’s survey activity on hold. It was important we allowed you to focus on your business and customers during this time, especially where you may be adapting to new working environments. We are also working with both you and our customers in any way we can to ensure everybody is receiving the support they need.
It is still vital we receive your feedback about our services, and improvements we have made so far this year. So as more and more companies are settling in to this new way of working we will be distributing the surveys this Monday, 27th April.
The survey will close on Wednesday 13th May - if you receive an invite, please spare 5 minutes of your time to provide the important feedback we need to continually improve our services.
10/10 - Having the Partners website is a good way to make sure the suppliers all get the same information.
Feedback received from customer survey
8/10 - I'm pleased that this has been introduced and anticipate that the information on the website will grow with time.
Feedback received from customer survey
We frequently post news and updates and have made training material available to help improve signposting practices. Guidance notes and information about our stance on certain issues have been added regularly. Thank you to those who reported back how useful these have been in understanding Ombudsman Services decision making principles and in enabling better calibration between the two partners.
Although those of you who had visited the website were happy with its creation and content, the responses also highlighted to us that not enough had been done to make all our members aware of it. So, we are working on promoting the website and making it available to all, by including links in our communications and social media posts. The link will also be included within our surveys so if you haven’t checked it out before you can now!
Customer Effort
We also asked how easy you found it to use our Case Management System (CMS); the system used by companies, consumers and Ombudsman Services to manage all submitted cases. The result of this question is calculated differently to customer satisfaction whereby the score can range from minus 100% to +100%, with a score greater than 0% considered ‘Good’.
Ombudsman Services received a score of 5%, so although this is classed as good it shows there’s room for improvement. Following on from the survey results we have held two CMS training workshops at our Daresbury office, these were open to all members to provide extra support in understanding and using the system.
We have demonstrated our commitment to CMS by deploying several improvements and continued to keep you up to date about changes to the system, the benefits of the change, what this means for users and how you can get further support.
Recommending our services
Finally, we asked how likely you would be to recommend our services and the overall NPS score was -4.4%. The comments made it clear that we are moving in the right direction and the score was reflective of companies’ experience over the last 12-18 months.
Some of the change programme delivered over the last 18 months has received mixed response, and we’re pleased that you have started to see improvements in the quality of service and in the relationships we share. You’ve asked for consistency and clearer communication and that’s something we’re already working on, and looking to further improve throughout 2020.
Improvements summarised
Since our first survey we’ve continued to improve the service you receive from us with activities like:
- Reviewing the data we hold about your teams/company to ensure we deliver the right information to the right people, first time
- Implementing a variance report so we can monitor changes and spot issues more quickly
- Engaging in deep dive analysis to generate actionable insights
- Setting up account plans with joint objectives, regular calls and meetings
- Planned a programme of engagement and events, like quarterly SLPs, using the feedback and learnings you provided
- Provided regular communications of news, events and guidance via our monthly service updates, website and social media channels
- Held CMS training workshops and provided timely CMS releases notes
- Set up and started actively promoting the dedicated partners website.
We cannot improve the future of complaint handling or our services without your feedback so hearing what matters most to you is important. We aim to ensure we shape future improvements that are fit-for-all.
Our next customer experience survey for Q1 of 2020 will be distributed shortly.
Please spare 5 minutes of your time to provide the important feedback we need to continually improve our services.