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.

Chick-fil-A Leads Fast Food 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 fast food industry:

• The average rating for fast food industry places it at number two out of 19 industries, only behind grocery chains.
• The average rating for the fast food industry increased from 74.0% in 2012 to 76.3% in 2013.
• Chick-fil-A is the top scoring fast food chain for the second straight year, with a rating of 82%. That score puts the fast food chain at #3 across all industries. It also earned the top marks for functional and emotional components in fast foods.
• Three other fast food chains are in the top 10 in the overall ratings; Dunkin’ Donuts, Little Caesar’s, and Sonic Drive-In are all tied at #7.
• Arby’s earned the top rating for the accessible component.
• KFC is the lowest-ranked fast food chain with a rating of 67%. That’s four points below the next lowest rated fast food chain, McDonalds.
• Hardees showed the largest improvement between 2012 and 2013, gaining 10 percentage points. Next on the list, Jack in the Box increased nine percentage points and Domino’s increased eight percentage points.
• While no firm declined by very much, three fast food chains dropped three percentage points between 2012 and 2013: Starbucks, Taco Bell, and KFC.
• Here’s a link to industry results from the 2012 ratings.

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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

Report: Net Promoter Score Benchmark Study, 2012

We just published a Temkin Group report, Net Promoter Score Benchmark Study, 2012. It provides NPS data on 180 U.S. companies across 19 industries. Here’s the executive summary:

USAA took the top two spots for its banking and insurance businesses while HSBC came in at the bottom for banking and credit cards. Our analysis of differences across consumer demographic segments showed that NPS tends to go up with age, doesn’t vary much by income levels, and is often highest with Asians. We also asked consumers what would make them more likely to recommend the companies and found that promoters are more likely to select lower prices and detractors are more likely to select better customer service. While there is some debate about the efficacy of NPS, our analysis shows that promoters are much more likely than detractors to purchase more in the future across all industries. To help you implement a successful NPS program, we’ve included eight tips such as don’t believe in an “ultimate question” and use control charts, not pinpointed goals.

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(includes the data)

The industries included in this report are airlines, auto dealers, banks, computer makers, credit card issuers, fast food chains, grocery chains, health plans, hotel chains, insurance carriers, Internet service providers, investment firms, major appliance makers, parcel delivery services, rental car agencies, retailers, software firms, TV service providers, and wireless carriers.

The report contains the following components:

• NPS for 180 companies across 19 industries
• NPS differences based on age, income, and ethnicity of consumers
• Improvement areas selected by promoters and detractors by industry
• Connection between NPS and future purchases by industry
• Eight tips for implementing a successful NPS program

Download report for $295
(Includes the data)

The bottom line:  Companies need to give customers a reason to recommend them

Chick-fil-A Customers Are Young, Wealthy, Educated, And Healthy

Chick-fil-A has been in the news lately because of the company’s stance on gay marriage. Don’t worry, I’m not going to use this blog as a sounding board for that controversy. But all of that attention made me think about Chick-fil-A. It’s quite a fast food company. Compared with other fast food companies that we’ve examined, Chick-fil-A is:

• Tied for 1st place in 2012 Temkin Experience Ratings with Starbucks and Subway
• 1st place in 2012 Temkin Forgiveness Ratings
• 1st place in 2012 Temkin Trust Ratings
• 1st place in 2012 Temkin Customer Service Ratings
• Tied for 1st place in 2012 Temkin Loyalty Ratings with Starbucks

Consumers seem to really love Chick-fil-A. So I took a look at their customers along with Burger King, KFC, McDonald’s, and Wendy’s. As the title of this blog states, Chick-fil-A customers are the youngest, wealthiest, most educated, and healthiest.

The bottom line: Politics aside, there’s no denying Chick-fil-A’s popularity

Chick-fil-A, Starbucks, and Subway Are CX Leaders in Fast Food

This post examines the 17 fast food chains included in the 2012 Temkin Experience Ratings.

Chick-fil-A, Starbucks, and Subway earned the top customer experience ratings in the industry and are tied for third spot across all 206 companies. The three leading fast food chains are the only ones in the industry to earn “excellent” customer experience ratings. Eleven of the 17 fast food chains earned “good” ratings while the bottom three—Hardees, Domino’s, and Jack in the Box—earned “okay” ratings.

The overall fast food industry earned the second spot out of 18 industries, slightly behind grocery chains but well ahead of other industries.

Other highlights from the research include:

• Starbucks and Subway received the highest Functional ratings while Domino’s and Jack in the Box received the lowest.
• Subway received the highest Accessible ratings while Hardees and Jack in the Box received the lowest.
• Chick-fil-A and Starbucks received the highest Emotional ratings while Hardees received the lowest.

Do you want to see the data? Go to the Temkin Ratings website where you can sort through all of the results for free. You can even purchase the underlying data if you want to get more access.

The bottom line: Most fast food chains deliver solid CX

McDonald’s Showcases Glocal Strategy

If you’ve dined in both the UK and the US, then you don’t need any focus groups to figure out that Brits and Americans have different culinary palettes. So it’s no surprise that a global food company might need a slightly different strategy in each country.

An article called McDonald’s: The World’s Local Restaurant pointed out how McDonald’s business has grown significantly from introducing products tailored to the specific customer tastes in other parts of the world like Little Chorizo Melt in Britain, McItaly burger in Italy, Maharaja Mac in India, McLobster in Canada and an Ebi Filit-O in Japan.

This is similar to what Macy’s found when it tailored its local merchandising as part of its My Macy’s strategy. In Macy’s case, the local changes affected different parts of the US.

These efforts are not isolated, but represent a move to a strategy called Glocalisation. While the term was originally used by Japanese businesses in the 1980s (thanks for the reference Deepak), here’s my spin on a definition:

Tailoring products and merchandising to meet local needs while supporting global brands

Here are some differences between Glocalisation and the typical approach of just translating a global strategy into local markets:

• Corporate marketing and merchandising groups will need to rethink their efforts. Rather than just setting strict global standards, they will also need to define parameters for local innovation.
• Local leaders will need to take on more responsibility for innovation, and not just operate in conformance with corporate standards.
• Innovation will need to be funded at both the global and local levels.

The bottom line: Is your strategy Glocal enough?

They Really FU At The Drive Thru

One of the lines that I always remember in Lethal Weapon 2 is when Leo Getz (Joe Pesci) tells Martin Riggs (Mel Gibson) that ”They f*** you at the drive through.” It turns out that Pesci was right in his assessment of fast food experiences. According to a new report from QSR Magazine, here’s how often fast food restaurants give customers what they ordered in a drive through.

My take: First of all, congrats to Chick-fil-A which actually came out on top of QSR’s overall analysis. The fast food restaurant made a mistake in less than 1 out of 25 customer orders. The big burger chains, McDonalds, Burger King, and Wendy’s, got it wrong for about 1 in 10 customers while KFC, Checkers, and Popeyes messed up about 1 in 7 orders.

I can’t imagine running any business where 1 out of 10 of my customers (or more) didn’t get what they ordered. That’s terrible! Any company should, at a minimum, consistently give customers what they pay for. It doesn’t take any customer research to realize that this is an incredibly important (and broken)  moment of truth.

The bottom line: Check what’s in your bag before you drive away.

Gen Y Brands Gain, Financial Brands Lose

Interbrand just published its annual ranking of the 100 best global brands. Here are the top 10 brands on the list:

1. Coca Cola
2. IBM
3. Microsoft
4. GE
5. Nokia
6. Totota
7. Intel
8. McDonald’s
9. Disney
10. Google

Here’s some of the other interesting details from the rankings:

• Google is the only new entry to the top 10; it was 20th last year. Which company dropped out? Mercedes-Benz was 10th last year and is 11th this year.
• The listing also provides the change in value of the brands since last year. Here are the biggest changes in brand value:
  • Top gainers: Google (+43%), Apple (+24%), Amazon (+19%), ZARA (+15%), SAP (+13%), and Nintendo (+13%)
  • Top losers: Merrill Lynch (-21%), Gap (-20%), Morgan Stanley (-16%), Citi (-15%), Ford (-12%), and UBS (-11%).
  • The top gainers are what I call “Gen Y brands,” they came to age during the early adulthood of 20 year-olds, while the losers are dominated by large financial institutions.
• There were 7 new brands on the top 100 list this year: H&M (#22), Blackberry (#73), Ferrari (#93), Giorgio Armani (#94), Marriott (#96), FedEx (#99), and Visa (#100).
• The highest ranked company on last year’s list that did not make this year’s top 100 was Kodak (#82 in 2007).
• For fun, I went back and looked at the top 10 brands from 2001. Here they are:
  1. Coca Cola
  2. Microsoft
  3. IBM
  4. GE
  5. Nokia
  6. Intel
  7. Disney
  8. Ford
  9. McDonald’s
  10. AT&T

The bottom line: Just about everyone recognizes this: 

The Satisfaction Quarterly Report, Q1 2008

I recently mentioned the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) to someone and was surprised that she had not heard of it. It’s a great research effort led by Claes Fornell at the University Of Michigan which tracks customer satisfaction on a quarterly basis. Here’s a chart of the national average since the index was created in 1994:

As you can tell, satisfaction scores have been generally on the rise over the last few years.

The ACSI provides both company-specific and industry-specific data for a different set of industries every quarter. The Q1 2008 ACSI looked at the following industries: hotels, restaurants, hospitals, cable & satellite TV, cellular telephones, computer software, fixed line telephone service, motion pictures, network/cable TV news, newspapers, wireless telephone service, airlines, express delivery, U.S. Postal Service, and energy utilities.

Here are some of the highlights from that Q1 2008 data:

• Best & Worst Organizations:
  • Top rated: FedEx Corporation (express delivery), UPS (express delivery), Olive Garden (restaurant), and Southern Company (Utility)
  • Largest improvement (since last year): Ameren Corporation (energy utilities), Reliant Energy (energy utilities), Energy Future Holdings (energy utilities), and McDonalds (limited service restaurants).
  • Lowest rated: US Airways (airlines), Charter Communications (cable & satellite TV), Comcast Corporation (cable & satellite TV), and Sprint Nextel (wireless telephone services).
  • Largest decline (since last year): US Airways (airlines), Continental Airlines (airlines), Sprint Nextel (wireless telephone services), and Northwest Airlines (airlines).
• Best & Worst Industries:
  • Top rated: Express Delivery and Ambulatory Care.
  • Largest improvement (since last year): Hotels and Fixed Line Telephone Services.
  • Lowest rated: Airlines, Cable & Satelitte TV, and Newspapers. 
  • Largest decline (since last year): Newspapers and Broadcast TV News.

The bottom line: This should be a wake-up call to many firms (are you listening airlines and cable & satellite companies?).