Listening to Service Providers: SPSO survey results

As well as listening to complainants, it is important that we listen to service providers’ opinions of our service.  In April 2009 we conducted our first ever survey of their views, sending questionnaires to all the organisations that had received a decision from us over the previous six months. The questions related to two areas, satisfaction with our service, and awareness of our service.  Respondents were asked to send their completed surveys to an independent consultancy firm, which analysed the results on our behalf. The response rate was 54% (82 returns of a total of 152).

We are very grateful to the organisations that responded for providing their views to help us improve our service.
 
While recognising that the sample was small, SPSO welcomed the many positive findings, in particular that among respondents:
 
  •  satisfaction with our case handling service was high
  • satisfaction with our general advice and guidance on complaint handling was also high
  • service providers agreed that SPSO decisions influence their organisation and working with the SPSO was seen as a positive driver for improvement in the area of complaint handling as well as more widely across their organisation
  • service providers agreed that the work of the SPSO contributed to improving public services across Scotland
 
We have drawn up an action plan to address the three areas where we scored less than 70% very satisfied/satisfied, as follows:
 
1) Time taken to consider complaint (levels of satisfaction in this area were 64% were very satisfied/ satisfied, 23% neutral, 14% dissatisfied/ very dissatisfied).
 
In response to this finding, we will be informing service providers of steps we are taking to improve the speed with which we examine and investigate complaints. We are already making significant inroads into resolving cases that had been with us over 12 months on 1 April 2009 and have introduced new measures to clear all such cases by December this year and to maintain this position going forwards. We have revised our Key Performance Indicators to better reflect the time we take to resolve cases at the different stages in our process. Later this year, we will be informing organisations about how we wish to work with them to achieve more consistency and speed in their response times to our enquiries.
 
2) Conferences, seminars and training (levels of satisfaction in this area were 68% very satisfied/ satisfied, 32% neutral, none dissatisfied/ very dissatisfied).
 
We will be making service providers more aware of our outreach programme that includes presentations and training in complaint handling. Our training unit, which will offer courses in complaint handling to frontline staff and investigators in local authorities, will be marketing this new SPSO service in the autumn. For further information, contact Kerry Barker on kbarker@spso.org.uk.
 
We will also be following up on the specific suggestions made by organisations about conferences, events or publications through which the SPSO could promote good complaint handling. 
 
3)Leaflets – only one SPSO publication scored under 70%. This was the planning leaflet, with which 64% of respondents were very satisfied/satisfied.
 
We have been reviewing this leaflet in light of changes to planning legislation and will be issuing an updated leaflet in August.
 
 
The full survey results can be downloaded here. For further information about any of the SPSO surveys please contact Emma Gray, Communications and Outreach Manager on egray@spso.org.uk.
 
7 August 2009