Introduction
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As the new Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman, I am very pleased to be publishing the fifth series of customer satisfaction research results.
This summary details the results of telephone interviews, conducted on our behalf by an independent research company, with a sample of our customers between May 2011 and October 2011.
The main role of my Office is to consider complaints of unfair treatment or poor service, and to put things right where we can. This is reflected in our first strategic objective, to deliver a high quality and accessible complaint handling service that puts right individual wrongs.
Looking at complaints involves making judgments on the quality of services provided by others. This means that we ourselves have to try to achieve the highest standard of customer service. Our customer satisfaction research plays an essential role in this, as it allows us to measure the quality of the services we provide and to what extent we meet our customers’ expectations.
The latest research results suggest that we are continuing to deliver a high quality service: the majority of our customers rated most aspects of our customer service favourably between May and October 2011. I am particularly pleased that most customers were positive about our professionalism, politeness and helpfulness and about the way we explain our role and our complaint handling process.
The most interesting and useful feedback is challenging feedback: it highlights where there is room for improvement. The latest research results show that some of our customers continue to be critical about their experience with our Office and do not have confidence in our ability to handle their complaint. To some extent this is inevitable: the nature of our work means that there will always be people who are unhappy and disappointed with the outcome of their complaint.
Alongside our customer satisfaction research findings we are publishing the results of our first research into how our customers experience our complaints process (‘customer journeys’ research). We commissioned this research to gain a deeper understanding of what drives customer satisfaction and how customers value each step of our complaints process. Together with our customer satisfaction research results, the customer journeys research findings are invaluable in supporting and informing the continuing improvement of our service.
In response to this feedback we are reviewing the way we explain our decisions to our customers. This includes changing the language in the letters we write and speaking in person to more of our customers.
One of my priorities as the new Ombudsman is to safeguard and enhance the quality of our casework and to ensure that we are accessible to everyone who may need us. This requires excellent communications and our research findings help us understand where we need to improve.
If you have recently made a complaint to us, or are thinking of bringing a complaint to my Office, I hope this research summary will provide a useful snapshot of the experiences of some of our recent customers. We are grateful to all those who have participated in the research: as a result of your feedback we are able to improve the service we offer to everyone.
Dame Julie Mellor DBE
Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman
