Advantage Rent A Car and USAA Lead in 2013 Temkin Forgiveness Ratings

All companies, even customer experience leaders, make mistakes. But how much goodwill have companies built up for consumers to forgive them after those miscues? To answer this question, Temkin Group surveyed 10,000 U.S. consumers about companies with whom they’ve recently interacted. We used this data for the third annual Temkin Forgiveness Ratings of 246 companies across 19 industries.

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Company Results

Here are the highlights of the 246 companies in the 2013 Temkin Forgiveness Ratings:

• Advantage earns top spot. With an excellent score of 61%, Advantage earned the highest rating.
• USAA dominates forgiveness. USAA grabbed the next three spots for its banking, insurance, and credit card businesses.
• The rest of the top 10. H.E.B., Blackboard, Aldi, Alaska Airlines, credit unions and Publix round out the top 10
• No industry owns the top. The top 25 companies in the ratings comes form a variety of industries: Four grocery chains, three airlines, three retailers, two banks, two hotel chains, two investment firms, two software firms, one appliance maker, one auto dealer, one credit card issuer, one fast food chain, one health plan, one insurance carrier, and one rental car agency.
• HSBC dominates the bottom. HSBC earned the bottom two spots in the ratings for its credit card and banking businesses.
• Many TV service providers are at the bottom. Six of the bottom 12 companies are TV service providers: Cox Communications, Time Warner Cable, Comcast, Verizon, Charter Communications, and Optimum (iO)/Cablevision.
• USAA most outperforms its peers. We compared company ratings with their industry averages and USAA came in the top three spots, 36 points above in banking, 31 points ahead in credit cards, and 28 points ahead in insurance. Three other companies are more than 20 points above their industry averages: Advantage (car rentals), credit unions (banking), and TriCare (health plans).
• HSBC most underperforms. HSBC fell the farthest below its industry average in two areas, 23 points behind its peers in banking and credit cards. Five other companies had scores that were 15 points and more below their industry: US Airways (airlines), Motel 6 (hotels), McAfee (software), Kia (auto dealers), and Hertz (rental cars).

We also examined year-over-year results for 204 companies that were in both the 2012 and 2013 Temkin Forgiveness Ratings. Here are some highlights of that analysis:

• Chrysler improves the most. With a jump of 29 percentage points, Chrysler is the most improved company.  Six other companies gained 20 points or more: Continental Airlines, Citigroup, Avis, EarthLink, Ameriprise Financial, and Alaska Airlines.
• US Cellular declines the most. With a drop of nearly 20 percentage points, US Cellular dropped the most in 2013.  Nine other companies fell by more than 10 points: Bright House Networks, HSBC, Cox Communications, Hertz, PNC, SunTrust Bank, Dollar Rental Car, Hyatt, and TD Ameritrade.

Industry Results

Here are the highlights of the 19 industries in the 2013 Temkin Forgiveness Ratings:

• TV service providers are unforgivable. TV service providers, as an industry, earned the lowest Temkin Forgiveness Rating of 12%. It was five points below Internet service providers and seven points below wireless carriers.
• Grocery chains are the most forgivable.  With an average rating of 39%, grocery chains are the highest scoring industry. Three industries are just four points behind: hotel chains, auto dealers, and rental car agencies.
• Credit cards make the most improvements. Credit cards made the largest improvement, nine percentage points, over the previous year.  Auto dealers, rental car agencies, and airlines also improved by more than five points.
• TV service providers head in the wrong direction. Led by TV service providers that dropped three points between 2012 and 2013, three industries earned lower scores in 2012. The other industries are retailers and appliance makers.

Calculating the Temkin Forgiveness Ratings

During January 2013, Temkin Group asked consumers to identify companies that they have interacted with during the previous 60 days.  For a random subset of those companies, consumers are asked to rate companies as follows:

How likely are you to forgive these companies if they deliver a bad experience?
Responses from 1= “extremely unlikely” to 7= “extremely likely”

For all companies with 100 or more consumer responses, we calculated the “net forgiveness” score. The Temkin Forgiveness Ratings are calculated by taking the percentage of consumers that selected either “6” or “7” and subtracting the percentage of consumers that selected either “1,” “2,” or “3.”

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To see all of the companies in the Temkin Forgiveness Ratings as ell as all of our other Temkin Ratings and sort through the results, visit the Temkin Ratings website

The bottom line: Forgiveness is an asset that you accumulate by consistently meeting customer needs.

Google and Apple Lead Software Industry in 2013 Temkin Experience Ratings

We recently released the 2013 Temkin Experience Ratings that ranks the customer experience of 246 companies across 19 industries based on a survey of 10,000 U.S. consumers. Here are highlights from the software industry:

• The software industry, on average, comes 11th out of 19 industries we studied. We did not study software firms in previous years.
• The top software firm, Google, earned a score of 67%, high in the “okay” range. The lowest-ranked software firm, McAfee, earned a 54%.
• McAfee earned the lowest score across all three underlying components, functional, accessible and emotional.
• Symantec earned the top spot  in the functional component.
• Google earned the top ratings accessible and emotional components.
• Apple, earned second place in the industry. While Apple is first place among its peers in the computer manufacturing industry, it received an even higher score for its software offerings—with a score of 67%.
• Here’s a link to industry results from the 2012 ratings.

Download entire dataset for $395

Report: 2013 Temkin Experience Ratings

We published the 2013 Temkin Experience Ratings. The report analyzes feedback from 10,000 U.S. consumers to rate 246 organizations across 19 industries. Congratulations to the top firms in this year’s ratings: Publix, Trader Joe’s, Aldi, Chick-fil-A, Amazon.com, and Sam’s Club.

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You can also download the data for $395.

The Temkin Experience Ratings are based on evaluating three elements of experience:

1. Functional: How well do experiences meet customers’ needs?
2. Accessible: How easy is it for customers to do what they want to do?
3. Emotional: How do customers feel about the experiences?

Here are the top and bottom companies in the ratings:

Here’s how the industries compare with each other:

(NOTE: We have published posts on the detailed results for all 19 industries)

Here are the companies that are leaders and laggards across the 19 industries:

In this year’s ratings, 37% of companies earned “good” or “excellent” scores, while 28% are rated as “poor” or ”very poor.” Companies with at least a “good” rating grew by nine-percentage points since 2012 and by 21-points since 2011. Of the 203 companies that are included in both the 2012 and 2013 Temkin Experience Ratings, 57% firms had at least a modest increase. The companies that made the largest improvement over 2012 are Citibank, TriCare, TD Ameritrade, Office Depot, EarthLink, Hardees, and Regions Bank.

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Get the Data

Do you want to see all of the data? You can purchase an excel spreadsheet for $395…

To view all of our ratings (experience, loyalty, trust, forgiveness, customer service, and web experience), visit the Temkin Ratings website…

The bottom line: Customer experience is improving, but there’s still a long way to go

Cloud Computing Leaders: Google, Microsoft, and ACS

The “cloud” is a popular topic in IT circles. So we decided to examine how much it will affect companies and how prepared technology vendors are to satisfy those changing customer demands. During January 2012, we asked 800 IT professionals from companies with at least $500 million in annual revenues two questions about cloud computing:

• Cloud importance: To what degree will the shift to cloud computing influence your company’s IT strategy over the next three years? (Note: 79% of IT professionals say it will have a significant influence)
• Cloud capabilities: Given your company’s plans for cloud computing, how would you rate the cloud computing capabilities of the IT vendors that you interact with compared with where they need to be?

To fully understand how prepared tech vendors are to meet their client’s changing IT needs for cloud computing, Temkin Group created the Cloud Readiness Index (CRI), a measure of where vendors are in their cloud capabilities compared with the needs of their customers. The CRI takes the cloud importance results and divides it by the cloud capability results as follows:

Here is the Cloud Readiness Index data for 60 tech vendors. Google, Microsoft’s business applications, and ACS are on top of 15 tech vendors in the “leading” category. At the other end of the spectrum, Autodesk, Check Point, and CGI are on the bottom of 25 tech vendors in the “lagging” category.
You can download the data from this post in an Excel spreadsheet for $195. The file includes detailed data for the Cloud Readiness Index as well as details for Cloud Importance and Cloud Capabilities. The spreadsheet includes the data for the 60 tech vendors listed in this post as well as for 28 other tech vendors with smaller sample sizes.

 The bottom line: Tech vendors need to meet their client’s cloud needs

Net Promoter Score and Market Share For 60 Tech Vendors

Temkin Group recently surveyed 800 IT professionals from large companies and asked them a series of questions about tech vendors. This research has fueled some of our previous posts: Temkin Experience Ratings for Tech Vendors, How IT Professionals Share Feedback About Vendors, and Tech Vendors: Benchmarking Product and Relationship Satisfaction of IT Clients.

We also asked the IT professionals to rate each tech vendor on the Net Promoter Score (NPS) scale.* NPS is based on one question: How likely are you to recommend the tech vendor to a friend or colleague? IT professionals choose an answer on a scale from 0 (not at all likely) to 10 (extremely likely). Responses are put into one of three categories:

• Promoters (score 9 or 10)
• Passives (score 7 or 8)
• Detractors (score 0 to 6)

NPS is calculated as the percentage of promoters minus the percentage of detractors. (If you’re interested in best practices for using NPS, read my post 9 Recommendations for NPS which is also part of our VoC resource page).

Here is the NPS for 60 tech vendors, ranging from Intel, Microsoft and Cisco in the 50s down to Compuware, Unisys, Cognizant, and Capgemini below 10.

We also asked the IT professionals how much their company was planning to spend in 2012 compared with 2011 and mapped this data with NPS. It turns out that we found four bands of performance in this market based on NPS scores:

• More than 40: These companies have much higher purchase momentum and are poised to grab a lot of market share
• Between 28 and 40: These companies have above average purchase momentum and are poised to gain market share
• Between 23 and 28: These companies have below average purchase momentum and are poised to lose market share
• Less than 23: These companies have much lower purchase momentum and are poised to give up a lot of market share

You can purchase the data in an excel spreadsheet for $195. The file includes details on the 60 tech vendors shown in this blog post as well as 28 other tech vendors with sample sizes too small to be included in our published research. The data includes sample sizes for the companies, percentages for promoters, detractors, and NPS score, as well as the percentage of companies with increasing spending plans and those with decreasing spending plans.

*Note: Net Promoter, NPS, and Net Promoter Score are trademarks of Satmetrix Systems, Bain & Company, and Fred Reichheld

Tech Vendors: Benchmarking Product and Relationship Satisfaction of IT Clients

We just published a new Temkin Group data snapshot: Tech Vendors: Benchmarking Product and Relationship Satisfaction of IT Clients. This new research highlights how IT professionals rate tech vendors in two key areas of experience: Products and relationships.

During January 2012, 800 IT professionals from companies with at least $500 million in annual revenues rated the products of and their relationships with 60 tech vendors. Some of the findings include: Intel dominates in product flexibility, Cisco leads in product features, Compuware’s product features are severely lacking, Google has a big lead in cost of ownership, Intel dominates in product flexibility, Apple leads in innovation, and Wipro is far behind in technical support.

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As you can see below, we found a wide range of ratings across the 60 tech vendors for each of the eight criteria we examined:

The data snapshot includes eight graphics that show the scores for each of the 60 tech vendors for each of these criteria. Here’s a summary of the firms with the highest and lowest average ratings:

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(includes spreadsheet with data)

The bottom line: Tech vendors need to improve their product and relationship experiences

Report: 2012 Temkin Experience Ratings of Tech Vendors

We are excited to be publishing this first report from our large-scale research on customer experience in the IT sector.

We just published a new Temkin Group report, 2012 Temkin Experience Ratings of Tech Vendors. The report analyzes feedback from 800 IT professionals to rate 60 tech suppliers. Congratulations to the top firms:

1) Microsoft (business applications)
1) Cisco
3) IBM SPSS
3) Microsoft (servers)
5) Microsoft (desktop software)
5) IBM software (other than SPSS)
5) Intel

Here is the executive summary from the report:

To understand the customer experience delivered by IT vendors, we surveyed 800 IT professionals from large companies. Using their feedback on the functional, accessible, and emotional components of experiences with vendors, we created the 2012 Temkin Experience Ratings for Tech Vendors which rates 60 large IT suppliers by their customers. Microsoft business applications, Cisco, IBM SPSS, and Microsoft servers were at the top of the list with “excellent” ratings. At the other end of the spectrum, Compuware, Capgemini, and Fujitsu were at the bottom of nine companies with “very poor” ratings. Our research also looked at the 2012 purchase plans for these IT buyers. When we chart the Temkin Experience Ratings for Tech Vendors with the purchase momentum for these 60 firms, it shows the clear connection between customer experience and revenues.

Download report for $295

The Temkin Experience Ratings for Tech Vendors are based on evaluating three elements of experience:

1. Functional: How well do experiences meet customers’ needs?
2. Accessible: How easy is it for customers to do what they want to do?
3. Emotional: How do customers feel about the experiences?

Here are the ratings for all 60 tech vendors that had feedback from at least 60 IT professionals:

The report also examined IT purchasing plans. We created a purchasing momentum index, equal to the percentage of companies planning to increase spending in 2012 minus the percentage that were planning to decrease spending. The report contains the purchasing momentum for all 60 tech vendors in the study. It turns out that the Temkin Experience Ratings are highly connected with purchase momentum:

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The bottom line: Customer experience and loyalty go hand in hand in the tech sector.

Rudy Giuliani Shares His Leadership Thoughts

At the Intuit Financial Services (Digital Insight just announced this new name) event in San Antonio where I was presenting, Rudy Giuliani gave a keynote speech. His topic was 6 keys to leadership; which he framed (somewhat) in terms of managing a company during a crisis. He relied heavily on stories about 9/11 and his experience as New York’s mayor.

While I don’t necessarily agree with all of Giuliani’s political views, I liked his leadership list. Here is some of what he discussed for each of the 6 items:

1. Have strong beliefs. He discussed the need to know who you are and where you are heading. His “hero” in this area was Ronald Reagan who stuck to his two core beliefs: 1) Communism was evil and needed to be confronted; and 2) massive government programs had become oppressive and were creating a burden for future generations. Giuliani was adamant that you can’t get overly swayed by public opinion.
2. Be an optimist. He said that people want to follow an optimist, so you always need to find ways to solve problems. But he also mentioned that you can’t be a fool and ignore the realities of the situation. He mentioned how Winston Churchill was clinically depressed, but was still always an optimist.
3. Have courage. You have to make decisions. Especially in times of crisis, things need to be changed. But this can be risky, because most organizations penalize bad decisions more than they reward good ones. The safest move is often to do nothing. He also said that nobody except a crazy person is fearless, so courage is the process of overcoming fear.
4. Relentless preparation. Giuliani says that preparation gives you courage; it makes you confident. He used to challenge his team to tell him ”why we shouldn’t do it” about a decision that he was about to make; to fully understand the objections in advance. Giuliani made a great observation: “if you prepare for what’s anticipated, then you’ll be prepared for what’s not anticipated.” He spoke about how New York City had develop plans for many different crisis situations, but not for planes flying into buildings. But he was able to quickly develop a plan on 9/11 based on all of the other plans that they had worked on. 
5. Teamwork. He suggests that you ask yourself “what are my weaknesses?” He says that if you can’t think of anything, then you should ask your husband/wife . Leaders need to create balance by hiring people who are strong in the areas where they are weak.
6. Communications. Leaders are motivators and teachers who succeed based on how effectively they work through others. He also said that you get what you measure, so you need to create real-time feedback mechanisms. Giuliani attributed the dramatic reduction in crime in New York to the city’s CompStat Program where city leaders look at and react to daily reports on crime statistics across every precinct.

My take: This is a great list. I’ve talked a lot in this blog about the first item, strong beliefs — which I refer to as “purpose.” Here’s an excerpt from my eBook The 6 New Management Imperatives from one of the imperatives called provide a clear and compelling purpose:

That’s why organizations need to (re)introduce a clear purpose for their organization that is more compelling than just more profits; a raison d’être that aligns the myriad of day-to-day decisions of all employees.

More recently, I defined four attributes of an Aligned Enterprise:

1. Purposeful leadership.
2. Adaptive design.
3. Customer-connectedness.
4. Employee engagement.

The bottom line: Lead with purpose!

Intuit’s Brad Smith Shares Customer Experience Insights

I’m speaking tomorrow at the Net Promoter Conference in San Francisco. After my flight today, I was able to catch a couple of sessions. One of those was a speech by Brad Smith, Intuit’s CEO.

(For some more background, read my post: Net Promoter And Satisfaction Battle For King Of The Ring).

Intuit has been one of the most active users of the Net Promoter methodology (focusing on customers’ answer to a single question: Would you recommend Intuit to a friend?). It started when Intuit’s founder Scott Cook championed the deployment of the Net Promoter Score (NPS) across Intuit in 2003. I’ve had several meeting with Cook since then and can attest to his strong commitment to NPS. One of Smith’s initial statements was very telling:

Net Promoter is core to the company… it’s part of who I am as a leader.

Smith also said that 81% of sales are directly attributable to word of mouth. He then went through three lessons that Intuit has learned on it’s Net Promoter journey. Here are a few of his interesting comments on those lessons:

1) Leaders Must Chart The Course

• He discussed “True North” as the direction towards customer experience that everyone in the company shares
• One of the firm’s goals is to have an NPS at least 10 points more than the nearest alternative
• They use customer feedback to rapidly change the Turbo Tax product; they changed more than 90% of the code during the tax season.

2) Delighting Customers Makes Employees Hearts Beat Faster

• He said that employees need hear customer feedback; whether they’re complaints or applause. Without it, he said, was like giving a show day after day in an empty theater.
• To empower employees to unleash ideas, 10% of employees time is “unstructured” and meant for finding ways to improve customer experience. They’ve created an online “Brainstorm” tool to facilitate idea sharing across the company. 

3) Innovation Fuels Customer Delight

• He suggests that you need to question long-held beliefs; and gave several examples of ideas from Gen Y employees. One of those ideas was to put the live support community inside of Turbo Tax. It turns out that 40% of the questions customers had were being answered by other customers.
• The company created Intuit Labs to facilitate innovation.
• One great example was a problem with Intuit’s IVR (the menu of options customers hear when they call). Customers were getting incorrectly routed 40% of the time. Since it took 10 days to reprogram the IVR, they couldn’t try a lot of things in the normal way. So one engineer said let’s do this the old fashioned way; and they did. People answered the phone and spoke the menus. By trial and error, they found a menu structure that worked before reprograming the IVR.

The bottom line: Would you recommend this blog to your friends and colleagues?

Congrats To Groundswell Award Winners

For those of you who don’t know, Forrester analysts Josh Bernoff and Charlene Li (she’s no longer with Forrester) published a great book on social computing called Groundswell. In conjunction with that book, Forrester created the Groundswell Awards to recognize firms that accomplish business goals with social applications. Well, the 2008 award winners were just announced and here are this year’s winners across eight categories:

• Embracing: MyStarbucksIdea.com by Starbucks
• Energizing: Hershey’s Bliss House Party by House Party
• Listening: Mattel’s “The Playground” Community by Communispace
• Managing: Borderless Workplace by Accenture
• Social Impact: Artshare, Click Exposition, and Posse by Brooklyn Museum
• Supporting: Nerd Network by National Instruments
• Talking: Young & Free Alberta by Common Wealth Credit Union
• Company transformation: Intuit

My take: First of all, congratulations to all of the winners! My research into voice of the customer best practices has pushed me to increasingly look at social technologies. While many of these activities are currently isolated inside of companies and are considered standalone ”social computing” activities, I see them getting blended into more comprehensive voice of the customer (VoC) and voice of the employee (VoE) programs. This will become even more important as firms adopt the new management imperative to make listening an enterprisewide skill. 

The bottom line: Companies should resist being anti-social.