2016 was a big year for Qantas: not only did it post a record full-year profit last financial year, launch its game-changing Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner, and announce a new non-stop Perth-to-London flight, but it also triumphed as Domestic Airline and Domestic Business Travel Airline of the Year in the annual Roy Morgan Customer Satisfaction Awards.
As if that wasn’t impressive enough, this is the third consecutive year the Flying Kangaroo has notched up this double-victory.
Emirates, on the other hand, are celebrating their first-ever International Airline of the Year Award. After finishing second to Singapore Airlines in the 2015 Awards, the Dubai-based airline—and Qantas partner, as it happens—made exceptional progress through 2016, consistently achieving satisfaction scores in the high 80s.
Roy Morgan Research CEO Michele Levine presents Emirates' Dean Cleaver (Regional Manager, Vic & Tas) with the Airline of the Year Award
Michele Levine, CEO, Roy Morgan Research, says:
“For many Australians, their holiday starts when their plane takes off, with the in-flight experience being an important prequel to their getaway. Qantas clearly understand this, warding off a spirited challenge by Virgin Australia to satisfy an average 85% of their leisure passengers every month of 2016, consolidating on their similarly successful results in 2015.
“Australia’s longest-running airline is also highly attuned to the needs of business travellers, winning the Domestic Business Travel Airline of the Year with ease. As of December last year, more than 87% of Qantas business passengers reported being satisfied; with the roll-out of its new in-flight wi-fi later this month, there is the potential for its satisfaction rate to hit even greater heights.
“Emirates, meanwhile, pulled off the seeming impossible, toppling long-time title-holder Singapore Airlines to secure its first victory as International Airline of the Year. While Air New Zealand gave them a run for their money, Emirates ultimately made a slightly better impression on its Australian passengers, with its satisfaction scores regularly nudging 90%. Could this signal the start of a new era in International Airline Customer Satisfaction?
”Congratulations to both airlines for flying so high in the Customer Satisfaction stakes!”
The Roy Morgan Customer Satisfaction Awards highlight the winners but this is only the tip of the iceberg. Roy Morgan tracks customer satisfaction, engagement, loyalty, advocacy and NPS across a wide range of industries and brands. This data can be analysed by month for your brand and importantly your competitive set.
Need to know what is driving (or sabotaging) your customer satisfaction? For comments or more information, please contact:
Allen Wei
Office: +61 (3) 9224 5388
Allen.Wei@roymorgan.com
Visit the Roy Morgan Customer Satisfaction Awards website. This website monitors the ongoing movements in Customer Satisfaction for many businesses across different industries.
customersatisfactionawards.com
How Roy Morgan scores Customer Satisfaction
What constitutes satisfaction?
For each product or service Roy Morgan Research asks customers to rate that product or service on a scale of: ‘very satisfied’, ‘fairly satisfied’, ‘neither satisfied nor dissatisfied’, ‘fairly dissatisfied’ and ‘very dissatisfied’ or ‘completely satisfied’, ‘somewhat satisfied’, ‘neither satisfied nor dissatisfied’, ‘not very satisfied’ and ‘not at all satisfied’. We combine those that were ‘fairly satisfied’ and ‘very satisfied’ and calculate this as a percentage of total customers. For every category only customers of that product or service are included.
Collection of satisfaction ratings
Roy Morgan Research has over 75 years’ experience in collecting objective, independent information on consumers. We conduct Australia’s largest continuous nationwide single source survey, conducting approximately 50,000 face-to-face interviews with consumers across Australia every year. Customer Satisfaction ratings are collected as a part of these surveys. For more information on how we collect our data, please view the Single Source fact sheet.
Time periods
Roy Morgan Research continuously monitors customer satisfaction throughout the year. We use cumulative rolling monthly averages to obtain a large enough sample so that smaller or niche brands can be monitored alongside larger ones. Current time periods are determined by each industry and the businesses within that industry; these are generally six or 12 month rolling averages. The specific time periods for the Roy Morgan Customer Satisfaction Awards are published with the results.
Sample sizes
To ensure accuracy in our monitoring Roy Morgan Research requires that organisations must have a sample of at least 100 customers from Roy Morgan’s Single Source survey that have used the products or service of that organisation in any given rolling period. Those sample sizes are published with results.