SINGAPORE – Customer satisfaction in the food and beverage, retail and tourism sectors fell sharply last year as businesses in those sectors continued to struggle with raising service quality.

But that did not prevent overall customer satisfaction in Singapore to rise to a new high last year, hauled up by rising satisfaction in finance and insurance, and the healthcare sectors.

These were the results of the Customer Satisfaction Index of Singapore (CSISG) released by The Institute of Service Excellence at the Singapore Management University (ISES) on Thursday.

The study showed that national satisfaction index rose for the fourth consecutive year to 71.1 points (on a 0 to 100 scale), a 0.6 per cent increase from 2013.

This is the fourth year running that the index has shown an improvement and represents a record high since it was started in 2007.

The improvement was contributed primarily by the finance and insurance sector, which scored 72.4, a 4.7 per cent gain, while the healthcare sector scored 71.0, a 1.6 per cent increase from 2013.

And because these sectors accounted for a larger proportion of the economy, their gains managed to pull up overall customer satisfaction, said ISES.

“Together, these two sectors helped nudge the national CSISG into positive territory in year-on-year change despite five out of nine measured sectors registering significantly lower year-on-year scores,” said ISES.

But five out of nine sectors saw drops in customer satisfaction.

The index for retail fell to 69.6 (-3.5%), while four other sectors also tumbled: transport and logistics, 72.1 (-0.8%), food and beverage, 65.8 (-6.5%), tourism, 69.1 (-7.3%), private education, 65.8 (-8.9%).

The info-communications and public education sectors registered similar performances from the previous year, said ISES.

Source: http://www.straitstimes.com/news/singapore/more-singapore-stories/story/customer-satisfaction-the-food-and-beverage-retail-and-t