business assurance customer satisfaction global report 2012 2013

CUSTOMERSATISFACTION2013 Report

LETTERFROM THE CEO“Total customer focus is and has beena main aspect of our strategy for a long time. Much effort is spent on ensuringthe quality and integrity of our service delivery to customers. We believe that tomorrow’s successful companieswill be those that create value while meeting the world’s economic, socialand environmental needs. Companies today face ever greater and more complex challenges and stakeholder expectations. We work hard to focus on their needsand find ways to help them manageand mitigate challenges and risks today while building a sustainable business performance for the future.”

As the CEO of DNV Business Assurance, I am very pleased to share our Customer Satisfaction Report with you. This summary details the results of web surveys sent to all

our customers for management system certification servicesfrom July 2012 to June 2013.

- Luca Crisciotti -

The Customer Satisfaction Report provides us with insight on how successful we are in our total customer focus. In addition to measuring our performance, we also use the information to identify opportunities for improving our strategy, processes and - not least - our service line. It helps strengthen our organisation and ability to increase the value we can provide to our customers.

We have measured our global customer satisfaction in a structured way for years; however, it is a pleasure for me to share the first annual issue of the Customer Satisfaction Report with you. In line with our values, we wish to be as transparent as possible on our efforts to be a true partner for our customers. I have to say that we are very pleased with the results presented in this issue of the report. The overall satisfaction of our customers has grown over the last 3 years, with 96.7% responding that they are satisfied with us overall. We are also particularly proud to say that when compared with our competitors, almost 70% of our customers found they had a “better” or “much better” experience with us. Moreover, about 98% would recommend us to a friend, partner or business associate.

This demonstrates to me that we are doing a number of things well and that we are being true to our values and who we wish to be as an organisation. But it is in our nature to always look for ways to improve, and I was pleased to see that the analysis revealed specific and practical opportunities for improvement. Globally, our customers are looking for services that provide even more added value at a reasonable price. We will look for ways to deliver more value for money and opportunities to help our customers use our services to build trust with their stakeholders.

These are challenges that we welcome. They are perfectly aligned with our strategy to build “sustainability into everything we do” and with our business development efforts both for existing and new services. Moreover, we will always work hard to ensure the quality and integrity of what we deliver to our customers to help them be successful today but also to build sustainable business performance and stakeholder trust over time.

Finally, I just wish to thank all of our customers who participated in providing us feedback; as a result we are able and will continue to improve the service we offer and value we provide. We promise to be focused on your future.

Luca Crisciotti,CEO DNV Business Assurance

DNV BUSINESS ASSURANCE - CS Report 2013 01

At DNV Business Assurance, we take our promise to our customers seriously. Since 1864 our purpose has been “to safeguard life, property and the environment”. Today, 150 years later, our vision is to have a “global impact for a safe and sustainable future”. Being true to our values, we work hard every day to make sure that:

. We build trust and confidence

. We never compromise on quality or integrity

. We are committed to teamwork and innovation

. We care for our customers and each other

This Customer Satisfaction Report consolidates the opinions of the 16,613 customers for Management System Certification from our 4 operational geographical divisions (Americas, North West Europe, South Central Europe, Middle East and Africa, Asia and Australia). While giving us an indication of how well we manage to live up to our values, the DNV Business Assurance management and staff also use the report to focus on specific service areas and issues important to our customers. Since it is based on a common framework and implemented in all our units worldwide, it also gives us a global benchmark. Thus it is a tool that helps us prioritize our efforts to achieve high levels of customer satisfaction.

In the following chapter “Approach and methodology” you will find a brief description of the survey respondents, highlights on the structure of the questionnaire and some considerations about the approach used for data analysis.

The chapter “Results” provides you with the outcome of the survey, first from a global perspective and then from an industry sector perspective. DNV Business Assurance delivers services in all the industry sectors but has a special global focus on Automotive & Aerospace, Food & Beverage and Healthcare sectors.

OBJECTIVESAND REPORT OUTLINE


APPROACHAND METHODOLOGYOur customer satisfaction survey is carried out using computer-assisted web interviews (CAWI) technology and is conducted during the year (reporting period for this publication was July 2012 – June 2013). Customers are interviewed once per year, on average one month after we have delivered our service (Management System Certification) to them.

We do not sample but instead directly involve our entire customer platform spread throughout our 4 geographical divisions: for this report, we gathered feedback from 16,613 customers from July 2012 to June 2013.

The responses received are from customers belonging to the entire spectrum of industry sectors with significant coverage of the primary industry, the manufacturing industry as well as the service industry. In the same way, the feedback covers all sizes of companies, from the micro company to the big listed company.

The chart below shows a geographical breakdown of customers who responded to the customer satisfaction survey in the reporting period.

AmericasSouth Central Europe, Middle East and Africa

North West EuropeAsia and Australia


Who are our customers (respondents)

17.1%38.1%

20.5%24.3%

With end-to-end logic (from marketing to post sales), the survey questionnaire investigates the customers’ perception of satisfaction of a complete set of service attributes that are clustered in 3 main areas:

Survey questionnaire

Marketing and sales:Here we investigate the customers’ opinion of the utilization and interactivity of the website. We also look at the entire sales process, including ease of contact, responsiveness of sales persons and the quality of the documentation provided during the sales process.

Service delivery:In this area of the questionnaire we focus on the main components of the service provisioning, looking at scheduling, pure audit activities, conduct of the auditors, certificate issuance and the invoicing process.

General attributes:The last part of the survey considers our customers’ opinions across a set of general aspects, including our brand, the value provided by our services and the geographical presence of our offices.

For performance measurement purposes it is not enough to survey customer satisfaction regarding a range of various aspects; different customers tend to rate the importance of these attributes differently. Sometimes they do not care so much for specific service attributes while valuing certain others and vice-versa. This is the reason we ask our customers to rate the Importance, in addition to the Satisfaction, that the same set of service attributes has for them, thus gathering more straightforward indications about the attributes that need to be prioritized over others.

The questionnaire ends with a set of final questions about customers’ Overall Satisfaction (base for calculating the CSI – Customer Satisfaction Index), their Overall Experience compared to competitors, their Willingness to Continue to Partner with us and their Willingness to Recommend us to friends, partners, business associates, etc.


The strength of the CAWI technology used for our survey lies in the total absence of data entry done by interviewers: it is the customer himself/herself that fills in the questionnaire and the answers given are automatically registered in a database, thus drastically reducing the probability of mistakes due to data compilation.

The analytical work was mainly aimed at determining the CSI (Customer Satisfaction Index) and the quadrant analysis.

The CSI is calculated by averaging the individual answers given by the respondents to the Overall Satisfaction question, which is based on an evaluation scale of 1 to 6 (Very Dissatisfied to Very Satisfied).

The quadrant analysis is obtained by averaging the Importance (scale of 1 to 6, Extremely Unimportant to Extremely Important) and Satisfaction scores for each service attribute, which is then mapped into the matrix. Its position in a specific quadrant provides direct insight into how it is perceived by customers.

Data analysis

Other metrics included in the report (willingness to recommend and willingness to continue to do business) are mainly analyzed based on the respondents’ distribution according to the different classes.

POTENTIAL OVER-EMPHASIS STRENGHTS

OF LESS CONCERN AREA OF CONCERN

Service attributes positioned right-bottom(Area of Concern) are scored by customers as relevant (important) but not fully satisfactory

The left-bottom includes service attributes which are Of Less Concern since both satisfaction and importance are scored low

The top-left shows Potential Over-Emphasis because satisfaction with the service is good but importance of the service attribute is low

The top-right is the area of Strengths, since both importance and satisfaction are scored high and the focus should be kept high on the agenda


importance

satis

fact

ion

RESULTSGlobal perspective

CSI & Trend

Globally, the feedback we gathered from 16,613 customers during the period in question (July 12 – June 13) showed an average Customer Satisfaction Index (CSI) of 5.15.

In the few last years, DNV Business Assurance’s global CSI has showna positive trend, with a significant boost (+1.9%) in 2011-12, whichis currently being maintained.

Overall questions

2010 - 2011

average CSI

2011 - 2012 2012 - 2013

5.05

average CSI5.15

average CSI5.15

DNVBUSINESSASSURANCE

OVERALL SATISFACTION

18,864customers

16,613customers

16,008customers


INTENT TO CONTINUE TO DO BUSINESS

99.1% of respondentsshow a willingness to continueto do business with DNV Business Assurance

96.7% of respondentsshow a positive satisfaction rating

strenghts

CDEF

K

WILLINGNESS TO RECOMMEND


Quadrant analysis

44

6

importance

satis

fact

ion

6

potential overemphasis strenghts

of less concern area of concern

Utilization and interactivity of our websiteEase of contacting our salespeopleCompetence of our sales teamResponsiveness of our salespersonsCompleteness of the sales documentation we provide

SalesABCDE

Invoice accuracy and timeliness Adequacy of our brand in supporting customersCo-marketing and customer referencesPriceGeographical presence of our offices

GeneralMNOPQ

Ease and flexibility of audit schedulingInsightfulness of the Auditors’ investigations/findingsCompleteness and clarity of audit resultsAdequacy of the time allocated for the auditAuditor professionalism and knowledgeAccuracy and timeliness of certificate issue Ease of contact of our people during contract lifecycle

DeliveryFGHIJKL

5.0

5.0

A

B CDEF

GH

IJ

KL

MN

O

P

Q

K

DC

EF

98.3% of respondentsshow a willingness to recommendDNV Business Assurance to others

The main concern expressed by our customers appears to be the price, most probably due to the ongoing challenging economic environment affecting a significant portion of the countries where we operate. With this in mind DNV Business Assurance is actively seeking ways to counterbalance this phenomenon, focusing on those aspects that do have a direct impact on the financials of our customers, like continuously expanding our geographical presence in order to deliver our services in a more efficient way (thus reducing the costs for our customers) on one hand, and continuously improving the quality of our services to increase the value for money on the other hand.

Other focus areas identified, even if of much less importance from our customers, are represented by:

• the web area (interactivity and utilization of our website by our customers) where ad-hoc projects have been launched already to develop e-Advantage (a dedicated customer portal for advanced interactivity with DNV Business Assurance)

• the marketing area (co-marketing activities between DNV Business Assurance and our customers and the portfolio of customer references) where significant efforts have been planned already and implemented to further strengthen our capacity to support our customers with their marketing, where needed, and to further expand the already significant customer reference list with big international brands through a dedicated key customer management approach. Unfortunately, full transparency of references is not always possible due to the confidentiality of some projects.

Furthermore, we are very proud to see that our customers do recognize our unquestionable excellence in the entire area of service delivery, from scheduling of our services to the knowledge and experience of our auditors and technical people, from the quality and clarity of our audit reports to the accuracy and timeliness of the dispatch of certificates to customers.

In some cases our customers also perceive an over performance: this happens with our main assets, our brand and with our geographical presence and spread, which are also something we are particularly proud of and we continue to focus and invest in.


CSI & Trend

AUTOMOTIVE& AEROSPACEINDUSTRY

The Customer Satisfaction Index (CSI) in the reporting period was 5.09 globally.

In the last few years, the CSI in the Automotive and Aerospace industry has shown a positive trend, with a significant boost (+2%) in 2011-12, which is currently being maintained.

2010 - 2011 2011 - 2012 2012 - 2013

average CSI5.00

average CSI5.10

average CSI5.09






Overall questions

A comment from the CEO

The Automotive & Aerospace sector is the most recent industry on which DNV Business Assurance has decided to place a particular focus. Thus I am particularly glad to see that our customersin this industry trust DNV Business Assurance and are willing to recommend us.Results like that do not happen by chance but as a consequence of efforts made by our people.Still, there are areas where we can improve to better meet the expectations of our customers.For that reason we are currently expanding our range of services within the industry, particularlyin the areas of Functional Safety and Supply Chain Management, which we expect to strengthen our position while we maintain our normal growth in the services we already offer, such asthe Automotive and Aerospace certification schemes, and expand into other countries.- Luca Crisciotti -




CSI & Trend

F&BINDUSTRY


In the last few years, the CSI in the Food and Beverage industry has shown a positive trend, with a significant boost (+2.2%) in 2011-12, which is currently being maintained.

2010 - 2011 2011 - 2012 2012 - 2013

average CSI5.02

average CSI5.13

average CSI5.15



97% of respondentsshow a positive satisfaction rating



Overall questions

The voice of the Global Industry Manager

We are pleased to see the good results, both in terms of the number of responses and the overall performance scored. Within this very demanding industry sector, it looks like our effort to increasethe quality level of our services is being rewarded. Increasing numbers of customers choose DNV Business Assurance as their preferred service provider, demonstrating good value for money for our services. We have identified areas for improvement, which are within our capability and already included in our improvement plan.- Stefano Crea -




CSI & Trend

HEALTHCAREINDUSTRY


In the last few years, the CSIin the Healthcare industry has shown a positive trend, with a significant boost (up 2.6% since 2010).

2010 - 2011 2011 - 2012

average CSI5.09

average CSI5.15

average CSI5.22

2012 - 2013





99% of respondentsshow a willingness to continueto do business with DNV Business Assurance

Overall questions

The voice of the Global Industry Manager

High customer satisfaction is an inherent attribute of DNV Business Assurance. Our goal is to provide timely, high quality and valued services that enhance the performance and reputation of our healthcare customers. These results serve as a great foundation for us to better understand the needs of our healthcare customers, the challenges they face, and how we can partner more effectively. The feedback received in the survey is very valuable to us. We are committed to continuous improvement and we thank our customers for taking the time to participate in the survey and share their comments and suggestions.- Karen Harding Timmons -




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business assurance customer satisfaction global report 2012 2013

Documents

customer satisfaction

global customer satisfaction

overall satisfaction

ceototal customer focus

business associate

business development

added value

stakeholder trust