OJK and customer satisfaction

OJK and customer satisfaction Premita Fifi Widhiawati ; Founder and Caretaker of the Institute of Education, Legal Aid and Advocacy Jurist Makara

JAKARTA POST, 23 Oktober 2012

  

“Be a yardstick of quality,” said the former American entrepreneur Steve Jobs. “Some people aren’t used to an environment where excellence is expected.” As the main focus of any institution providing goods or services, including government institutions, customers have every right to receive the best quality. Fulfilling their demands is compulsory for those institutions providing services. Establishing good quality of products or services, including government services, results in good customer satisfaction.  However, there are many factors to be surveyed, studied and calculated before we can pinpoint which product or services provided by what company or government entity gives the best quality and delivers the best customer satisfaction. Around the globe, there are many methods to measure the quality of products and the direct correlation with customer satisfaction.  One of them is a method developed by the University of Michigan and used by the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI). It shows a simple fact: The better the quality, the higher the satisfaction.  For financial institutions in Indonesia, the history of unsatisfied customers has shown an increase. Bank Indonesia noted that just for the first three months of this year, there were 216,708 complaints regarding many banks, up by 417 cases from the previous year’s figure. Of the complaints, around 96.31 percent concern ATMs and credit cards.  The Indonesian Consumer Protection Foundation (YLKI) has found that problems related to credit cards derive from mainly three sources. On the customer’s side, there is a lack of information about their rights and obligations as responsible card holders. From the bank, as issuers of credit cards, there is limited information for customers and their lack of access to file their complaints. From the regulator’s side, in this case Bank Indonesia, there is very limited access for customers to find out about regulations. Other than banks, leasing companies have traditionally been facing mounting complaints filed by customers. Misconduct committed by collectors, regarding car and motorcycle financing, has long become a constant nuisance to customers. Those complaints indicate customers’ level of dissatisfaction as a result of the lack of good products or service quality. In the US, the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) measures how American people rate their government agencies, companies, industries, services and sectors. This method enables any government entities to monitor end user satisfaction levels with the quality of their services over time and also compares the result to other organizations in the private and public spheres. The same measurement has also been widely used by the government of Singapore through the Customer Satisfaction Index of Singapore (CSISG). As a nation whose main income is derived from service industries, Singapore has long comprehended the need to maintain and upgrade its quality of services. Therefore, CSISG serves as an invaluable benchmarking tool across industries in the services sector and plays a major role in increasing gross domestic product (GDP). The ACSI method has also long been used by the Asian Productivity Organization (APO), an intergovernmental, non-political, non-profit and non-discriminatory organization in Asia established in 1961.  In the APO, ACSI was renamed the Customer Satisfaction Index (CSI). Research has shown that the national CSI score is a strong predictor of GDP growth, and an even stronger predictor of personal  consumption expenditure growth.  A high CSI is correlated with higher financial returns and with strong customer loyalty. In Indonesia, for government service entities, people are unlikely to have choices. They will be forced to take or use whatever the government provides.  Nevertheless, it is compulsory for the government to provide good quality services to its people. As a new government body, the Financial Services Authority (OJK) is conducting vast and comprehensive duties that make it difficult to measure the performance of financial institutions regarding overall quality from the point of view of the customer. One approach to that situation is emulating the US and Singapore governments. The method has been proved to help and enhance the quality of American and Singaporean public services, including in the financial field. By adopting an integrated, independent and proven survey method, hopefully OJK will each beyond its limited time and personnel to gather valuable information as a starting point to develop the country’s financial institutions into better, stronger institutions that are more compliant with government regulations.  Most importantly, as Jobs said, OJK could act as a yardstick of how Indonesian financial institutions can offer the best quality services to their customers. ●