Univé new winner of Customer Performance Award for best service provider

Univé insurance company delivered the best customer performance last year. This has been revealed by research conducted by the Customer Insights Center of the University of Groningen, the customer analytics bureau MIcompany and market research bureau MetrixLab. What is noticeable is that the sectors and companies that scored poorly last year – for a variety of reasons – such as banks and public transport companies, are now recovering.

The third annual prestigious Customer Performance Awards (CPA) were presented on 2 February to an overall winner and seven winners per business sector. The survey was conducted among seven thousand customers of the hundred largest Dutch service-provision companies. The academic article on the research, entitled ‘Univé levert beste klantprestaties’ [Univé has best customer performance], has been published in the Tijdschrift voor Marketing [Marketing Journal] (Bügel et al. (2012).

Changes at the top

IKEA was the overall winner of the Customer Performance Award on the last two occasions, but Univé is the new number 1. IKEA remains in the top 3, after XS4ALL at number 2. It is remarkable that XS4ALL, a newcomer in the research, has ended so high and is also the winner in the telecom sector. The new online insurer Inshared is also doing very well in fourth place. The top 5 is rounded off by Bol.com. Rabobank is still in the top 10 but is no longer in the top 5.

Insurers with intermediaries struggling

What stands out at the bottom of the list (numbers 96-100) is that there are four insurance companies, all of whom work with intermediaries. It appears that insurance companies with intermediaries find it difficult to deliver strong customer performance. What also stands out is that both ING Bank and ABN Amro have climbed strongly up the list. ING Bank climbed no fewer than 22 places and is now at number 31.

Sector winners: NS and Jumbo stand out

One remarkable sector winner is Jumbo, taking over first place in the supermarket sector from Albert Heijn, which was also nominated. Another remarkable winner is NS in the transport sector. This means that in the past year there has been a clear improvement in the value provided to the customer. XS4ALL is not only a newcomer in the measurements but also the immediate winner in the telecom sector, surpassing the other two nominees, Vodafone and Tele2. Shell, Landal GreenParks and IKEA all succeeded in repeating their performance of last year as best in their sector.

Remarkable recovery for banks and public transport

Across all sectors, the value delivered to the customer has remained roughly the same (see figure 2). However, whereas last year the public transport sector plummeted, we now see a recovery in their value for customers. The scores here have risen by over 5 percent on average. A similar rise can be seen among mobile phone companies. What is also remarkable is that banks in the Netherlands have improved their customer value by 4.6 percent (see figure 3). What we can also see in this branch is that ING and ABN Amro have clearly begun to perform better and are starting to close the gap with the highly valued Rabobank.

CPA: a joint initiative

Three parties have joined forces to create the customer performance award – the Customer Insights Center of the University of Groningen, the intelligence bureau MIcompany and the market research bureau MetrixLab.
The Customer Insights Center of the University is responsible for the academic underpinning of the research. This research centre is the Dutch knowledge platform for professionals and shares customer knowledge from recent and relevant marketing research.
Within the research project, MIcompany establishes the value that companies are able to create for themselves from their customers. MIcompany is specialized in identifying growth opportunities for companies on the basis of customer behaviour data.
MetrixLab is responsible for data collection and benchmark design in the field of Customer Performance and is a specialist in the field of online market research in more than 44 countries worldwide.

Note for the press

For more information:
- Prof. Peter C. Verhoef

- Dr Marnix Bügel, tel. 06-10573029, e-mail: MBugel micompany.nl

Appendices:

Univé insurance company delivered the best customer performance last year. This has been revealed by research conducted by the Customer Insights Center of the University of Groningen, the customer analytics bureau MIcompany and market research bureau MetrixLab.