Methodology

In our service satisfaction surveys, respondents are asked to rate the importance of a detailed list of aspects of service that fall into specific categories (eg provider perceptions, new business administration, existing business administration, staff perceptions etc) using a five-point scale from ‘not at all important’ through to ‘very important’. From this we calculate a mean score out of five to determine the perceived importance of each individual aspect of service.

Following this, respondents are then asked to rate their satisfaction with the service they receive from providers they use, again using a five-point scale from ‘very dissatisfied’ through to ‘very satisfied’ for each aspect of service.

We then combine the ‘satisfied’ and ‘very satisfied’ responses to determine the ‘total satisfaction score’ for each individual aspect of service. We then weight this data by the importance mean score to reflect the perceived importance of that particular element of service.

The weighted satisfaction score for each aspect of service data is then aggregated to determine satisfaction scores by category, and then again to determine one overall satisfaction score for a particular provider.

The final step is to take all the scores and calculate five bandings in a similar approach to how we determine five DNA levels for our Star Rating methodology. Those with the highest scores are given a Gold or Silver Service Rating based on their position in the banded hierarchy.