SA municipalities experience 3yr customer satisfaction decline– SA-csi

The South African Customer Satisfaction Index 2018 (SA-csi) for Municipalities survey, conducted in the first quarter of 2018 and produced by Consulta, reports that while Cape Town residents were the most satisfied with local government service delivery, overall satisfaction levels have declined in all municipalities across South Africa, with the exception of Nelson Mandela Bay.

The SA-csi score for Municipalities has experienced year-on-year decline, dropping from 59.5 in 2016 and 59.3 in 2017 to 57.4 in 2018. Mangaung, in the Free State, played a key role in the overall decline with its score plunging 10.2 points from 51.3 in 2017 to 41.1 in 2018. Buffalo City, Ekurhuleni, Johannesburg, Cape Town and Tshwane also saw an overall decline in sentiment in the latest survey.

However, it’s not all doom and gloom as Nelson Mandela Bay continued its consistent SA-csi score increase, rising from 53.8 in 2016 to 59.0 in 2017 and 61.9 in 2018, and achieving the second highest score in this year’s survey.

While Cape Town may have maintained its leading position in the 2018 SA-csi by scoring 65.2, it’s score fell for the third consecutive year down from 68.5 in 2017 and a high of 70.3 in 2016. While the city’s municipality ranks as the leader, the index reveals that its residents have the highest expectations of their municipality and are therefore more sensitive to sub-par delivery.

“Cape Town may have retained the top spot in this category, but its residents were frustrated by leadership battles and disappointed in the city’s handling of the water crisis,” says SA-csi Founder & Chairperson, Professor Adré Schreuder. “Mangaung performed especially poorly as an upheaval in the Province’s leadership has put a spotlight on municipal mismanagement, corruption and the decline of vital services such as garbage removal and roads.

“Every municipality has experienced raised citizen expectations since the 2016 local government elections, with officials already beginning to ramp up electioneering and making promises ahead of the 2019 national elections. Considering this, citizens have a heightened sense of awareness to non-delivery and are calling out the inability of many to deliver on these expectations, resulting in the biggest perceived delivery gap of any sector measured under SA-csi,” Schreuder says.

Now in its fifth year, SA-csi for Municipalities offers impartial insights into the South African municipalities by measuring customers’ overall satisfaction out of 100. This satisfaction score is based on municipalities exceeding or falling short of customer expectations and assessing how well a municipality is measured against respondents’ perception of the ideal service provider. The Index also includes, among other measures, a Customer Expectations Index, a Perceived Quality Index and a Perceived Citizen Trust Index.

The 2018 sample included 2287 residents who were randomly selected from eight municipalities to participate in a telephonic survey during the first quarter of 2018.

As municipalities do not operate in a competitive environment, a Citizen Trust Index, which measures the likelihood that a citizen will have confidence in, or speak positively of, their municipality is included. Citizen Trust is a public sector metric that is equivalent to Consulta’s Private Sector metrics that gauge customers’ likelihood to recommend a brand to their family and friends.

Cape Town achieved the highest Citizen Trust score of 68.5, and although this is 3.9 points lower than its 2017 level of 72.4, this score was 5.8 points higher than the industry average of 62.6.

Nelson Mandela Bay had the next highest Citizen Trust score of 66.2, followed by Tshwane with 64.0 and Johannesburg with 63.0. With a low 49.9 Citizen Trust score, Mangaung woes are evident in every metric used in the Index.

Low citizen trust and satisfaction levels were reflected in the complaint incidence and handling data for the surveyed municipalities, and Mangaung and Buffalo City each experienced the highest complaint incidence compared to an industry average of 44.4%. These two municipalities also had the lowest complaint handling level of 31.4 each, compared to an industry average of 40.2. Cape Town had the lowest complaint incidence of 37%, while eThekwini had the best complaint handling score of 44.4.

Certainly, one of the hottest topics in the past year, water was the most common complaint category across the municipalities, with citizens either not receiving clean water or having restricted access to water. This was followed by electricity, tax bills, road conditions and call centres on the list of most common complaints.

“The Auditor General’s report for 2016/17 revealed huge problems in local government due to a continued decline in accountability,” Schreuder says. “It showed that an overall deterioration meant that 112 out of 278 South African municipalities don’t have the necessary funds to carry out service delivery plans for the year, and only 14 of these have approved financial recovery plans.”

Municipalities are also measured against the Treating Customer Fairly (TCF) measure, an outcome-based regulatory and supervisory approach designed to ensure that consumers experience specific, clearly articulated fairness outcomes for financial services from regulated entities.

Cape Town and Nelson Mandela Bay achieved the best overall TCF score of 67.7, particularly in providing access to electricity, garbage removal and providing clean water. Despite both regions suffering severe drought, the water made accessible to the citizens was clean. The lowest TCF scores were in Mangaung and Buffalo City.

“The combination of the Auditor General’s reports of municipalities’ financial mismanagement, neglect and failure to deliver basic services to citizens, and the measure of residents’ sentiments about these organisations that are meant to deliver basic services, paints an alarming picture,” Schreuder adds. “If this low level of citizen satisfaction to be seen in a competitive commercial sector, none of these entities would be able to stay in business. The sense of feeling trapped is very likely to have contributed even more to a poor customer experience.”

See Consulta for more information or visit Consulta’s blog for all SA-csi survey results.