Customer service improvements could add £81.5bn to the UK economy

Study finds

Improvements in customer service could add £81.5 billion to the UK’s GDP in the space of just 12 months, according to new research released today.

In the largest study of its kind ever undertaken, the Institute of Customer Service’s ‘The Customer Dividend’ report sees the customer satisfaction scores of 124 different organisations mapped against a number of financial metrics, including turnover, ebitda, profit, revenue per employee and human value capital add (HCVA).

The results reveal emphatic evidence that when an organisation has happy customers, it is more likely to have happy shareholders.

On average, organisations who maintain a customer satisfaction score above their sector average (taken from the Institute’s biannual UK Customer Satisfaction Index) achieve 9.1 per cent revenue growth year-on-year, and compound growth of 4.7 per cent across a five to eight-year period. Those with a lower-than-average customer satisfaction score achieve 0.4 per cent growth year-on-year and just 3.5 per cent in the longer period.

Among the firms analysed, Premier Inn (55 per cent), Aldi (21 per cent) and Costa Coffee (19 per cent) are the UK organisations who have achieved some of the strongest long-term revenue growth whilst maintaining a high level of customer satisfaction.

Meanwhile, the Institute’s analysis shows that even organisations moving from below average to average for customer satisfaction scores could be worth £81.5 billion to the UK economy across a 12-month period.