Kiwis Count — Service satisfaction

Kiwis Count measures New Zealanders’ satisfaction with 43 commonly used services. The results are used to calculate the SQS for each service and an overall SQS across all services (headline result). In 2017, 11 new services were introduced to the 43 commonly used services, replacing services that had seen reductions in usage.

New Zealanders’ satisfaction with the quality of public services has increased over the past decade. The overall SQS has increased nine points from 68 in 2007 to 77 in 2018 and remains at 77 for 2019. This is the highest it has ever been.

Figure 6: Overall service quality score

Kiwis Count also asks New Zealanders about their use of, and satisfaction with, seven types of private sector companies (banks or finance companies, insurance companies, credit card companies and electricity or gas companies). These scores are aggregated to give an overall private sector SQS.

Figure 7 shows that since 2007, satisfaction with private sector services has been lower than satisfaction with public services. While satisfaction with public sector services has increased since 2007 and stayed the same in 2019, satisfaction with private sector services since 2012 has plateaued at 68, the same as the previous eight years.

Figure 7: Service quality score ‒ public sector vs private sector

• There isn’t a systematic difference in satisfaction across regions for either public sector or private sector services. The variation between regions has reduced since 2012 for public sector services.
• Women report higher satisfaction with most public and private sector services than men. In 2019, the overall public sector SQS for women was 78, and 76 for men. This reflects a small decrease for females and a small increase on 2018 for males.
• In 2019, all ethnic groups report high satisfaction with the quality of public services they used. There were similar scores for those of Asian (79), NZ European (78), and Pasifika (78) ethnicities. Satisfaction is lower for Māori (73). All ethnicities have seen service satisfaction improve since 2012. Looking at a direct comparison of NZ Europeans vs non-NZ Europeans, the SQS gap has narrowed from a five-point gap in 2012 to a two-point gap in 2019.
• Those over 65 years report higher satisfaction with both public and private sector services than other age groups.
• Satisfaction with the quality of public services for those with disabilities is the same for those without disabilities (77 in 2019). This has improved from a difference of minus three points in 2018. Satisfaction with private sector services for those with disabilities (71 in 2019) is higher than for those without disabilities (68 in 2019) which reverses the situation in 2018.
• There was little difference in the satisfaction with both public and private sector services by the household income earned.
• There is no difference in the satisfaction with both private and public sector services for those respondents holding degree/ higher qualifications, lower level and no qualifications.

Kiwis Count measures New Zealanders’ satisfaction with 43 commonly used public services[1]. In this section, we discuss changes in satisfaction ratings for individual services. The removal and addition of 11 services mean change in 2019 is not measured for these services. The chart consequently reports change for 32 services. The trend over time is important because it highlights whether services are, continuing to meet or exceed individuals’ expectations.  We highlight those changes in the quality of individual services that have been statistically significant[2] since services were first measured and in the latest year.

Since first measured

Significant Increase: 24

Significant Decrease: 1

The improvement in overall satisfaction in the 2019 results is small, although they are statistically significant. The first service ‘Been through the arrival process at a New Zealand international airport (when arriving from outside NZ)’, saw a 3 point increase from 79–82 points, a modest increase on a strong score in 2018. The second service ‘Used a local council provided community facility (e.g. a swimming pool, community hall or local park)’ increased by 2 points, from a score of 76 in 2018 to 78 in 2019. Scores for both services represent the highest yet score for these services.

The two greatest improvements in satisfaction in 2019 are ‘Registered a birth, death, marriage or civil union’ (+15) and ‘Paid or got information about fines or reparations’ (+14). The service ‘Visited sorted.org.nz (for information to help manage your personal finances or planning for retirement)’ has the largest decrease at -5 and this has decreased in 2019 from -8 in 2018. This result comes from an all time high in 2018 which may have been an outlier, so needs to be used with caution.

Figure 8: Service quality scores for individual services (2019), significant change since first measured

There is a wide range in the satisfaction levels across the 43 services.  At the top there are five services that have a rating between 87 and 88.  This means that the average rating on a five-point scale is between four and five.

• Applied for and/or received New Zealand Superannuation (88)
• Applied for or renewed a NZ passport (88)
• Used a Gold Card (88)
• Licensed or registered a vehicle (87)
• Registered a birth, death, marriage or civil union (87)

At the other end, there are three services with ratings around 50 or less. This means the average rating is just below three on a five-point scale.

• Applied for, used or asked for information about a building permit (49).
• Made a noise complaint (49).
• Applied for a resource consent or made a submission on a notified resource consent application (38).

All three of these services have decreased slightly since 2018. Table 1 shows all annual results for each service.

Table 1: Service quality score for individual public services

SQS statistically significant changes

Over 2019, two services have improved and one service has declined.

Significant Increase: 2

Significant Decrease: 1

Statistically significant increases

The improvement in overall satisfaction in the 2019 results is small, although they are statistically significant. The first service ‘Been through the arrival process at a New Zealand international airport (when arriving from outside NZ)’, saw a 3 point increase from 79–82, a modest increase on a strong score in 2018. The second service ‘Used a local council provided community facility (e.g. a swimming pool, community hall or local park)’ increased by 2 points, from a score of 76 in 2018 to 78 in 2019. Scores for both services represent the highest yet score for these services.

Statistically significant decreases

One service recorded a statistically significant decrease in service quality over the year ‘Applied for, or lived in a publicly subsidised house (e.g. a house owned by Housing NZ or a community housing provider or a local council)’. This decrease follows a strong improvement in the SQS score in 2018 and brings a score of 64, similar to previous scores. The result for 2018 may have been an outlier.

Table 2: Sector SQS scores

Satisfaction with most recent service interaction

Another way of measuring overall satisfaction is asking respondents about their satisfaction with their most recent service interaction – this is also how trust based on personal experience is measured. Overall satisfaction using this measure remains strong, at 78%, the same as last year. While this is slightly lower than in 2015, it is five percentage points higher than the overall satisfaction score in 2012.

In the new questionnaire, first used in 2017, the survey asked the public to identify what was the most important service to them. Responses to this question are given in

Table 3. As can be seen, the areas of health and education feature prominently in the top 10 services as do other services such as licensing or registering a vehicle.

Table 3: most important service

[1] See the latest Technical Report for a description of the Kiwis Count methodology.

[2] Significance is calculated at the 95% confidence level using a weighted two-sample t-test. This means that changes in SQS score are highlighted where there is less than a 5% chance that the change was due to sampling error. Sampling error is due to sample of the population being surveyed rather than the entire population.