(CMR) The Cayman Islands Government (CIG) is celebrating an overall customer satisfaction rating of 93 percent, gained from one million responses received through its HappyOrNot customer service feedback terminals.
Currently set up at 36 heavily customer-facing locations across Grand Cayman and Cayman Brac, the terminals provide a quick way for members of the public to record whether they are happy or not with the service they receive during an interaction with a Government entity.
The CIG began rolling out the terminals in 2018 as a means of continually gauging customer satisfaction and as a way to monitor the outcome of its customer service improvement efforts. The initiative was tied to the Civil Service’s efforts to ‘Deliver an outstanding customer experience,’ one of the goals of its 5-Year Strategic Plan.
The program started with nine departments, with priority given to entities with the highest customer traffic and a mandate to focus on improving their customers’ experience. Now, 17 departments representing 10 ministries and portfolios have terminals.
The milestone of one million responses was recorded on 23 July.
Deputy Governor Hon Franz Manderson has noted, “Our desire when we started this journey was, and still is, to put the customer at the heart of everything we do. One of our key performance indicators is customer satisfaction. While improvement is a continuous journey, I am really proud of the work that teams have done to make customers happy.”
To compare customer satisfaction performance across the CIG and from one time period to another, the raw percentage satisfaction score is translated to a weighted ‘Happy Index.’ A higher index value represents a better performance. The overall Happy Index in 2022 was 91; for year-to-date 2023, the index is 92.
The terminals feature four buttons, depicting faces with expressions ranging from very happy to very unhappy. A customer clicks the face that conveys how they feel about the service they received that day.
Two of the early adopters of the program, the Department of Vehicle and Drivers’ Licensing (DVDL) and the Cayman Islands Postal Service, are examples of the benefits of monitoring and acting on customer feedback.
The DVDL, in response to early feedback, made concerted efforts in 2021 to improve its service delivery.
Portfolio of the Civil Service Management Support Advisor Donna-Kay Smith, whose unit worked with several of the departments in this process, explained, “The DVDL used a comprehensive approach that focused on simultaneously addressing multiple factors that were affecting its services. As a result, their Happy Index increased from 67 in 2018 to 91 in 2021 and 94 in 2022.”
She continued, “Since 2018, the Postal Service has maintained a Happy Index of over 90 by monitoring its customer satisfaction results. The team is continuously seeking to improve its service delivery and has recently started to utilize the digital hyperlinks associated with the kiosks to obtain deeper insights into customer feedback.”
“The predominantly positive responses show we are heading in the right direction. However, the presence of negative responses showing less-than-happy customers indicates that there is still room for improvement, “ Deputy Governor Manderson said.
“I am grateful to the public for voluntarily sharing their opinion. People do that because they care about the service we provide. They want to support excellent delivery or see a change when needed. I encourage our staff to welcome both positive and negative customer responses. They provide valuable insights into what is working well that we should maintain and what is not working well that we can improve to make our services better,” he added.
The Deputy Governor concluded, “For us to further enhance our current performance, entities will need to work towards continuously improving their service delivery. After all, demonstrating service excellence requires not only achieving a high rating but also consistently maintaining it over time.”
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