Findings

International benchmarks

In 2005/6, SSC looked at public satisfaction surveying in a number of other countries and found that Canada has developed a highly successful approach through its national all-of-government satisfaction surveys, called Citizens First, which are carried out every two years. Importantly, Canada can show that it has acted on the research findings and levels of satisfaction have consistently improved since 1998. Canada is highly ranked internationally for its citizen-centred services². SSC purchased the intellectual property licence for Citizens First and adapted it for the Kiwis Count survey. The Kiwis Count survey shows that, at 68%, satisfaction with New Zealand public services is equal with Canada's 2005 Citizens First survey (the most recently available results). This is a good result for New Zealand public services, but we can always do better and the survey identifies areas where improvements should be focussed.

Drivers of satisfaction

The Drivers Survey, published in July 2007, identified the drivers that have the greatest impact on New Zealanders' satisfaction with public services.

Drivers of satisfaction with service quality

The service experience met your expectations Staff were competent Staff kept their promises - that is, they did what they said they would do You were treated fairly You feel your individual circumstances were taken into account It's an example of good value for tax dollars spent

Not all the drivers are equal: 'the service experience met your expectations' accounts for nearly one third of satisfaction with public services.

The Kiwis Count survey measured satisfaction with public services against the six main drivers, shown in the graph below.

Performance of public services on drivers of satisfaction with service quality

• Public services perform best on 'staff were competent', with three-quarters of New Zealanders agreeing that this was the case on their most recent service experience.
• Performance on 'the service experience met your expectations' is not as good. Because this is the most important driver, improving performance on this would have the greatest impact on satisfaction.
• However, we also need to address the worst performing drivers: only slightly more than half of respondents agreed that their most recent service experience was 'an example of good value for tax dollars spent'. 'You feel your individual circumstances were taken into account' also scored less well than other drivers.

The survey asked New Zealanders about the public services they had used in the last 12 months and the service they had used most recently. The results show that New Zealanders' satisfaction with their most recent service experience tends to be higher than their overall satisfaction with services used in the last 12 months: 68% were satisfied with their most recent service experience and only 62% were satisfied with services experienced over the last 12 months.

Performance by service grouping

Services were categorised into nine service groupings in order to provide results for similar services and to help identify broad areas for improvements. A list of the services in each service grouping is set out at the end of this booklet. The results have not been broken down into individual services and agencies because this would have made the results too complex and it was not the intention to produce league tables of results. The Common Measurements Tool described later in this booklet will allow agencies to carry out their own client satisfaction surveys which are comparable with the Kiwis Count survey.

The graph following shows New Zealanders' satisfaction with their most recent service experience by service grouping. Satisfaction is highest for 'environment and recreation' and 'motor vehicle' services. 'Education and training', 'health', 'local government' and 'passports and citizenship' are all rated well. Satisfaction is lower for 'social assistance', while fewer than half of New Zealanders are satisfied with 'taxation and business services'.

Satisfaction levels with most recent service experience by service grouping (%)

Performance on the drivers by service grouping

The survey results have been broken down to show how each service grouping performed against the drivers of satisfaction.

Performance on drivers of satisfaction with service quality by service grouping (%)
	Total	Environ-ment & Recrea-tion	Motor Vehicle	Educa-tion & Training	Health	Local Govt	Pass-ports & Citizen-ship	Justice & Security	Social Assis-tance	Taxa-tion & Busi-ness Serv-ices
Satisfaction	68	79	77	75	74	73	72	68	52	42
The service met your expectations	66	85	76	68	71	71	68	69	52	44
Staff were competent	75	90	84	76	81	76	80	79	58	59
Staff kept their promises	70	83	79	69	75	73	76	69	58	56
You were treated fairly	73	75	81	78	81	72	70	75	60	60
You feel your individual circumstances were taken into account	63	71	65	66	77	61	55	71	51	50
It's an example of good value for tax dollars spent	55	56	38	59	70	69	20	62	54	37

The survey shows where agencies providing services within the service groupings might focus improvements in order to increase satisfaction. At the end of this booklet are set out some of the ways agencies can use these findings to focus on making improvements in these areas, such as using the Common Measurements Tool and setting up Communities of Practice.

Public and private sector

The survey looked at how New Zealanders rate public services in comparison with similar private sector services. The results show that:

• New Zealanders expect public services to be higher quality than the private sector
• but they do not think that the overall quality of public services is higher than the private sector
• and they do not think that public services have a more difficult task than the private sector.

The survey also asked New Zealanders about their satisfaction with a range of non-government services used in the last 12 months including banks, insurance companies and telephone companies. These services were selected because they are in some ways comparable with public services. Overall, 58% of New Zealanders were satisfied with the non-government services they had experienced over the last 12 months, compared with 62% who were satisfied with public services experienced over the last 12 months.

These seemingly contradictory findings suggest that New Zealanders' experiences of public services tend to be more positive than their perceptions. New Zealanders do not think that the overall quality of public services is higher than the private sector, however when asked about their specific service experiences, their satisfaction ratings with public services are higher than non-government services.

Trust in public services

We think that when people lose trust in public services, they do not seek the help they are entitled to, they do not provide information needed for delivering effective services, they resist paying tax and become increasingly resentful of public services. To increase New Zealanders' trust in public services, we need to understand the factors that most influence, or drive, trust. As with satisfaction, this will enable managers to focus resources on the factors that have the most potential to increase trust. The Drivers Survey, as well as identifying drivers of satisfaction, also identified five drivers of trust in public services.

Drivers of trust in public services

You have confidence that public servants do a good job The public service provides services that meet your needs Public servants treat people fairly The public service keeps its promises - that is, it does what it says it will do The public service admits responsibility when it makes mistakes

The Kiwis Count survey asked about trust in public services. Overall, 29% of New Zealanders agree that they trust public services, and just under half (49%) are neutral about their trust in public services. This means that three-quarters of New Zealanders either agree that they trust public services overall, or are neutral on trust. Less than 25% express distrust. Notwithstanding this, the results show that there is significant potential to improve how public services perform on trust (compared with satisfaction). On the individual drivers of trust, public services perform best on 'the public service provides services that meet your needs' and least well on 'the public service admits responsibility when it makes mistakes', with nearly half of New Zealanders disagreeing that this is the case.

The survey also asked New Zealanders about trust in relation to their most recent public service experience. This is significantly higher than their trust overall, in fact over two thirds of New Zealanders trusted the public service to do what was right on their most recent service experience.

Trust in public services: overall trust compared with trust on most recent service experience

Again, this indicates that New Zealanders' experiences tend to be more positive than their perceptions. However, the results show it is important for public services to increase overall levels of trust.

Māori

The results show that there is very little difference between Māori views on public services and the views of New Zealanders overall. Sixty one per cent of Māori were satisfied with services used in the last 12 months, compared with 62% of all New Zealanders, and there was very little variation in satisfaction with the different service groupings. On the drivers of satisfaction, results for Māori are similar to New Zealanders as a whole, including on 'you were treated fairly', the most important driver of satisfaction for Māori.

Methods of contact

New Zealanders were asked how they had contacted the public service they had used most recently.

• The most common method of contact is to visit an office or location (47%).
• The second most common method of contact is calling on the telephone (24%).
• Using websites or emails is relatively uncommon, with only 4% of New Zealanders using a website to contact a public service and only 3% using email. However, it may be that when answering the survey, New Zealanders did not consider using a website as 'contacting' a service.

New Zealanders were also asked about their satisfaction with the method of contact they had used. Three-quarters of New Zealanders are satisfied with visiting an office or location, the most commonly used method. However, calling on the telephone, the second most common method, has the lowest satisfaction rating, at 60%.

Because calling on the telephone has a low satisfaction rating, further analysis was carried out on the drivers of satisfaction with telephone services, which showed that improvements could be made in the following two areas in particular:

• the service experience met your expectations, and
• the amount of time it took to get the overall service was reasonable.

... and more

The research report includes more detail on the methodology used for the Kiwis Count survey and on the findings set out in this booklet. The research report also has data on:

• frequency of use of different services
• gender, age, ethnicity, education and income of people using services for each service grouping
• reasons for contacting services
• access to services.

² For example, see the Accenture report 2007 Leadership in Customer Service: Delivering on the Promise,
www.accenture.com .