The Institute of Customer Service Professionals has released its maiden Customer Service Index which has ranked Ghana C for what it describes to be an average performance in the area of customer service relations.
The ranking, which tackled eight sectors of the economy also saw Ghana’s public sector score a grade F.
Chief Executive Officer of the Institute of Customer Service Professionals, Yvonne Ohui McCarthy, tells JoyBusiness this development sends wrong signals to investors.
“C is not where we want to be, especially now that we’re talking about drawing in more investors and being a wind of foreign aid. I think we can do better. If you look at the public sector, for example, we scored a ‘D’. This is unacceptable,” she said.
Meanwhile, the telecoms industry scored 4th below the retail (1st with Grade B), hospitality (2nd with Grade B) and online sectors (3rd with Grade B).
So far, Ghana has no existing regulatory body which streamlines customer service in the country. But the ICSP believes deeper private sector engagement could get things working in the right direction.
"Customer service here in Ghana is very sick. There is a lot that needs to be done to address this issue. We can't monetize the effects of poor customer service here in Ghana but I must say that when you have foreign investors experience poor customer service in the very first point of call, you must expect them to make a second decision on whether or not they want to explore business opportunities in the country," she said.
Customer Service Index
The Ghana Customer Service Index (GCSI) is a yearly report which provides an insight into the state of customer service in Ghana.
The report initially focuses on eight key sectors. They are financial institutions, utilities, telecommunications, hospitality, healthcare, retail food and non-food, public institutions and online businesses.
GCSI would use a 3-component approach; research, traditional surveys (face to face, telephone and written questionnaires) and online surveys as a basis to measure the performance of businesses vis-à-vis their customer relations.
The Index determines the “degree of satisfaction” of customers who patronize the services of companies – both private and public.
Customers were asked to rate their experience of dealing with the selected sectors and each customer can rate only one organization per sector. Each customer completed the survey for up to 8 different sectors.
The metrics and indicative areas reflected the priorities customers identified as the most important attribute of customer experience.
Customers rated the sectors and some organizations on a scale of 1-10 using the following metrics: Look and feel, competence, professionalism, ease of doing business, processes and procedure, customer-focused innovations, staff engagement, feedback and complaint.
The index scores are expressed as a number out of 100. The GCSI for each chosen organization is the average of all its customer satisfaction score multiplied by 10.
The sector score is calculated by using the mean average of all responses for that sector multiplied by 10.
Sectors would then be compared according to the scores and recommendations would be made as to how things can be improved going forward. Specific sectors who score reveal interesting or worrying trends were also be captured in the report.
Facebook
Twitter
Pinterest
Instagram
Google+
YouTube
LinkedIn
RSS