About the State of the Customer report
State of the Customer reports on our goal to deliver easy, effective and trustworthy government services. It represents a new way to publish customer experiences based on what people have told us about our services.
It is a new annual public reflection of what’s working well and areas for improvement as identified by our customers. This supports our commitment to put customers at the heart of everything we do, as outlined in the NSW Customer Strategy: Towards a customer-centric government.
The report has been compiled from feedback captured through the NSW Government Customer Experience Survey (CXS). The CXS is how we are measuring if our services are easy, effective and trustworthy. The CXS provides insights into the experience of over 30,000 individuals and businesses annually, covering 550 different transactions across 37 government services.
These insights will be used to better understand customer experiences across different communities and locations, to support continual improvement of services and decision-making to achieve the best outcomes for our customers.
The CXS is a survey that is administered on a continuous or ‘always on’ basis and is designed to measure and understand customer experiences with NSW Government services.
The CXS was designed in partnership with the University of Technology, Sydney over a period of nine months in 2021.
The CXS is one of the largest public sector customer experience surveys of its kind in the world, with over 30,000 customers surveyed in NSW every year, with 24,000 of those being individuals and 6,000 businesses. The State of the Customer reports on insights captured from January to June 2022.
The survey was launched for the first time in December 2021 and replaces the previous Customer Satisfaction Measurement Survey (CSMS), which was run annually from 2015 through to 2020.
The CXS is administered by an independent market research agency, Fiftyfive5. This engagement is managed by the Customer Insights team within the NSW Department of Customer Service. Fiftyfive5 are responsible for administering the survey and producing the results.
The CXS asks about customers’ experiences with government services. This includes:
- Ease: How easy or difficult was it to interact with government services?
- Satisfaction: How satisfied or dissatisfied were you with your experience?
- Trust: To what extent do you trust the government service to be working in your best interests?
- Industry benchmarking: Thinking about all your experiences with each of the following industries and public services over the past 12 months, how satisfied would you say you are with each?
Respondents answer these questions on a 5 point scale. For ease, a rating of (1) means Very difficult and a rating of (5) means Very easy. For satisfaction and industry benchmarking, a rating of (1) means Very dissatisfied and a rating of (5) means Very satisfied. For trust, a rating of (1) means Do not trust at all and a rating of (5) means Trust a great deal.
The survey also asks customers 23 questions about whether they agreed if the service they experienced delivered on our Customer Commitments. These questions form a useful diagnostic tool to understand how we deliver on our Customer Commitments. These commitments outline our promise to customers on what they can expect from our services.
Respondents answer these questions on a 5 point scale, where a rating of (1) means Strongly disagree and a rating of (5) means Strongly agree, with an additional option to select Not applicable. Those who select Not applicable are excluded from the results for that question.
The CXS aims to bring the voice of customers to the centre of NSW Government decision making and supports our mission to put the customer at the centre of everything we do.
The CXS can be completed online via PC, laptop, tablet or mobile and is optimised for all formats. It is administered in English.
Data is collected on a continuous basis throughout the year at the rate of 2000 individual and 500 business surveys per month.
To complete the survey, customers must have had direct interaction with a NSW Government service within the last 12 months, whether as an individual or on behalf of a business.
Respondents are sourced from independent third-party market research panels where members have opted-in to participate in surveys for research purposes. Participation is voluntary and respondents can opt out at any time. Survey responses are anonymous and no personal identifiable information is collected.
The survey sample is representative of the NSW population and the data is weighted to reflect this. For individuals, this is based on age, sex and location. For businesses, this is based on business size, industry and location.
We need to track our progress to achieve our vision to be the world’s most customer-centric government by 2030.
So, we surveyed people of Victoria and Queensland, as well as those from other countries, to compare and understand the experience of NSW customers with government services.
The six international jurisdictions include: New Zealand, Singapore, Canada, United Kingdom, Germany and Denmark.
The CXS is administered in other jurisdictions once a year (in March) and includes two domestic jurisdictions (Victoria and Queensland), as well as six international jurisdictions (New Zealand, Singapore, Canada, United Kingdom, Germany and Denmark).
To ensure data was collected consistently across jurisdictions, people in other jurisdictions saw the same questions as NSW, however questions were reframed to be specific to the jurisdiction where the survey respondent lives.