Customer satisfaction with agricultural research

Close customer relationships and customer satisfaction are important aspects of attaining the efficiency targets of the research stations. In order to be able to meet these targets even better, the Swiss Federal Office for Agriculture carried out a written consultation in 2006. A total of 1712 farmers gave their opinion of the comprehensibility of information and the practical benefit, which they derive from the information from Agroscope and downstream communicators of knowledge. Comprehensibility and benefit were for the most part assessed as being good to very good, crop farmers and among them horticulturalists in particular assessing Agroscope’s services more positively than livestock farmers. It showed especially the importance of communicators of knowledge as providers of information in areas in which Agroscope is no longer active due to cuts in funding. Overall, farmers were very interested in new findings. They are therefore also convinced in the main that research is important for the future of Swiss agriculture. However, they want research to be more practice-based. These findings from the customer consultation provide valuable information for the formation of Agroscope’s work programmes and communication plan, in order to foster the exchange of knowledge between the research stations and their customers.