Research and analysis

Summary: DWP Customer Experience Survey: Child Maintenance Service 2020 to 2021

Published 25 May 2023

1. Overview

The Customer Experience Survey (CES) is designed to monitor customer satisfaction with the services offered by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) to inform improvements in service delivery. It is a cross-sectional study with quarterly interviewing. This research was externally commissioned by the Department for Work and Pensions with fieldwork and data analysis independently conducted by Ipsos MORI.

The data in this report is based on 3,365 interviews conducted with Child Maintenance Service customers who had contact with the service between April 2020 and March 2021. This report presents data on overall customer satisfaction and data that is mapped to the DWP Customer Charter. The DWP Customer Charter provides standards against which customer service delivery can be measured and a framework to drive improvements in engagement, interaction and satisfaction for both customers and employees. There are four core areas that inform the Customer Charter, which are Right Treatment, Easy Access, Keeping you Informed and Getting it Right.

2. Research context

The CES replaced the previous Claimant Service and Experience Survey (CSES) in 2019 and Child Maintenance Service (CMS) customers were included in the survey for the first time. Due to disruption to fieldwork in 2019 to 2020 because of COVID it was not possible to produce an annual dataset. The 2020 to 2021 data provides a new survey baseline for CMS customers.

2.1 About Child Maintenance Service

The Child Maintenance Service (CMS) helps separated families to make financial choices to provide for their children when needed. Child Maintenance is an arrangement between parents to cover the child’s living costs when one parent no longer lives with them. Parents use the CMS to arrange child maintenance if they do not want to contact the other parent themselves, and many have tried family-based arrangements before deciding to use the CMS. The CMS is unique in that there are two customers for each case (a receiving parent and a paying parent), often with an opposing position about their maintenance arrangement.

3. Methodology

3.1 Sample

The CES is a survey of customers who have had recent contact with CMS rather than all CMS customers. The sample includes parents who have been in contact with the service during each three-month quarter to either: make a new application, report a change of circumstances, or because of arrears. ‘Contact’ includes any time a customer has phoned, written a letter, emailed, filled in an online form or used the Child Maintenance online portal, or otherwise got in touch with the CMS. It is also any time someone from CMS has contacted a customer using any of these methods. For the customer to be included in the overall survey population, the contact needs to have triggered a change in CMS administrative data.

A quota sample design is used to meet minimum interview targets for each parent type and contact reason, with a random sample of CMS customers drawn from the population to meet these quotas. Weighting is then applied to the data so that findings are representative of the survey population: data is weighted by age, gender, length of service use and contact reason.

3.2 Fieldwork

The survey moved to a mixed-mode online and telephone approach from 2019 with fieldwork conducted quarterly with CMS customers. The data in this annual report is based on interviews completed with 3,365 CMS customers who had contact with the service between April 2020 and March 2021.

4. Main Findings

It is important when considering the satisfaction of these customers to note that CMS is unique in that there are two customers for each case, often with an opposing position about their maintenance arrangement. This means that, in many instances, when a positive result for one customer is achieved, the other customer may be less satisfied. This can include, for example, where enforcement action is taken to secure child maintenance, where collect and pay arrangements are implemented and where payments and liability are calculated based on known circumstances. Parents often contact CMS at a time where their personal relationships are strained and CMS customers may have a poor quality or non-existent relationship with the other parent. Many have tried family-based arrangements before deciding to use the CMS.

These circumstances of CMS customers, particularly arrears customers, mean that they may not necessarily be expected to have high levels of satisfaction.

4.1 Overall Satisfaction

• Overall CMS customer satisfaction was 38 per cent
• 46 per cent of Receiving Parents and 29 per cent of Paying Parents were satisfied with CMS services
• 60 per cent of new customers, 35 per cent of change of circumstances customers and 34 per cent of arrears customers were satisfied

5. DWP Customer Charter measures

This section examines data from survey questions that are mapped against the four core elements of DWP’s Customer Charter: Right Treatment, Easy Access, Keeping you Informed and Getting it Right. The question measures have been selected on the basis that they best represent the charter area topic and have the best coverage of survey respondents (as some questions are only asked to particular customer groups).

5.1 Right Treatment

• 48 per cent of customers agreed that staff understood their needs
• 54 per cent of customers agreed their query or request was handled professionally
• 43 per cent of customers agreed staff did what they said they would
• 71 per cent of receiving parents agreed that CMS tailored their services to their personal circumstances

5.2 Easy Access

• 80 per cent of new customers found it easy to find all the relevant information on GOV.UK when they were looking to set up a Child Maintenance arrangement
• 75 per cent of new customers agreed the communication they received from CMS was easy to understand
• 60 per cent of customers found the process of submitting a new claim or reporting a CoC easy
• 59 per cent of customers who had access to their CMS online portal found it easy to use
• 36 per cent of customers were able to get the information they needed the first time they tried when they contacted CMS

5.3 Keeping you Informed

• 57 per cent of customers agreed that staff informed them what they needed to do next after they had been in contact with CMS
• 70 per cent of new customers agreed they had a good understanding of what would happen next during the application process
• 64 per cent of new customers agreed that CMS provided them with timescales for processing the decision around their application
• 67% of new customers agreed CMS told them when they could expect to make or receive a payment

5.4 Getting it Right

• 63 per cent of customers reported they had to contact CMS more than once to explain the same information about their new application or change of circumstances
• 62 per cent of new customers reported that the outcome of their claim was explained in enough detail to understand CMS’s decision
• 58 per cent of new customers were satisfied with the time it took for CMS to tell them the outcome of their claim
• 45 per cent of customers agreed staff provided accurate information

6. Customer Characteristics

6.1 Equality measures

The following section explores overall customer satisfaction by age, gender, ethnicity, and whether customers reported having a long-term health condition.

Age

• Younger age groups were more likely to be satisfied than older age groups. Those aged between 16 and 24 (53%) and 25-34 (43%) had higher satisfaction than those aged 45-54 (34%) and 55+ (29%)

Gender

• 46 per cent of females reported that they were satisfied compared to just 30 per cent of males. This is because male CMS customers are more likely to be paying parents, for whom overall satisfaction is lower

Ethnicity

• Customers from a White ethnic background were the least satisfied at 38 per cent. Half of Asian/Asian British customers were satisfied (50%), while just under half of Black/African/Caribbean/Black British customers (46%) and Other/Mixed/Multiple Ethnicity customers (46%) were satisfied

Long-term health conditions

• Those who reported having any kind of long-term health condition had similar levels of satisfaction to those with no health conditions, with satisfaction ranging between 35 per cent for those with a mental health condition and 41 per cent for those who reported having a physical condition

Long-term health condition profile

• 27 per cent of customers reported having a long-term health condition
• Of these: nine per cent had a physical condition; 12 per cent had a mental health condition; and six per cent had both a physical and mental health condition

6.2 Digital propensity

• 96 per cent of customers stated they could access the internet
• 84 per cent of customers reported, if it had been available, they could have used the internet to access government services without help. A further six per cent could access government services online with help