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.

Toyota Leads Auto Dealers 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 parcel delivery industry:

• The average rating for airlines places it at number nine out of 19 industries. The industry’s average rating remains steady at 64% in 2013. Last year’s average was 63%.
• The highest-ranked auto dealer is Toyota, earned a 71% rating, five points ahead of Ford and Honda.
• Toyota earned the highest ratings for all three components of the ratings: functional, accessible, and emotional.
• Kia is the lowest rated auto dealer for the second straight year, with a rating of 58%. It was also the lowest scoring in the emotional component.
• Hyundai had the highest increase over 2012, with a nine percentage point gain.
• BMW had the worst decline over last year, with a seven percentage point loss between 2012 and 2013. It was also the lowest scoring in the accessible component.
• Chevrolet was the only other auto dealer to experience a decline, falling out if it’s first place position last year.
• 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: What Happens After A Good or Bad Experience?

We just published a Temkin Group report, What Happens After A Good or Bad Experience? This large-scale consumer study uncovers negatively biased feedback and significant upside from good service recovery. Here’s the executive summary:

We asked 5,000 U.S. consumers about their experiences with 179 companies across 19 industries. More than 60% who had a bad experience with a fast food chain, credit card issuer, rental car agency, or hotel cut back on their spending, and many stopped completely. But service recovery helps. For every level of improvement in how they responded to a bad experience, companies were rewarded with more sales. Unfortunately, firms aren’t very good at service recovery, especially banks and credit card issuers. TV service providers delivered the greatest number of bad experiences while grocery chains had the fewest. At a company level, ING Direct and Holiday Inn had the lowest number of bad experiences, while QVC and Best Buy had the highest. We also examined how consumers share their good and bad experiences, across age groups and income levels, and compared results from last year. This analysis uncovered a negative bias in how consumers give feedback. Motel 6, ING Direct, Albertsons, and RadioShack have the most negative bias in the feedback they get directly from customers; Cox Communications and Symantec have the most negative bias in feedback on Facebook; and Verizon and GE face the most negative bias on Twitter.

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The report has 20 graphics full of data on consumer behavior and company ratings. It starts by looking at the prevalence of bad experiences. It turns out that 20% of consumers have had a bad experience with a TV service provider while only 5% have had a bad experience with a grocery store.

One of the streams of analysis looks at how consumers give feedback. As you can see, companies are more likely to hear about bad experiences than good experiences.

Here are some of the other findings in the research:

• ING Direct (2%), Holiday Inn Express (2%) Whole Foods (3%) and Holiday Inn (3%) had the fewest occurrences of bad experience, while Best Buy (29%), QVC (29%), Gap (28%), and eBay (26%) had the most.
• After a bad experience consumers were most likely to completely stop spending with rental car agencies (40%), credit card issuers (39%), computer makers (35%), and auto dealers (35%), but least likely to stop spending with retailers (9%) and Internet service providers (10%).
• When companies responded very poorly after a bad experience, 47% of consumers stopped spending completely with the company. When they had a very good response, only 6% stopped spending and 37% increased their spending.
• Retailers (46%) most often recovered well from a bad experience while Internet service providers (15%) and health plans (15%) were the worst at recovering.
• 38% of consumers gave feedback directly to the company after a very bad experience, but only 31% gave feedback after a very good experience.
• 14% of consumers gave feedback on a rating site like Yelp after both a very good or a very bad experience.
• The use of twitter to communicate about a very bad experience has grown from 4% to 9% of consumers over the last year.
• 33% of 18- to 24-year-olds have posted about a good experience on Facebook, compared with only 5% of those who are 65 and older.
• 18% of 18- to 24-year-olds have tweeted about a good experience, compared with only about 1% of those who are 55 and older.
• 17% of consumers who earn $100K or more have tweeted about a bad experience, compared with only 7% of those who earn less than $50K.
• Given their customer demographics, Motel 6, ING Direct, Albertsons, and RadioShack are the most likely to receive direct customer feedback that is negatively biased while Cablevision, Avis, Nissan dealers, and Dodge dealers are the most likely to receive positively biased feedback.
• Given their customer demographics, Cox Communications, Symantec, ING Direct, and TracFone are the most likely to have negatively biased comments on Facebook, while Cablevision, AOL, Kaiser Permanente, and Holiday Inn are the most likely to have positively biased comments.
• Given their customer demographics, Verizon and GE are the most likely to have negatively biased comments on Twitter, while Avis and Edward Jones are most likely to have positively biased tweets.

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The bottom line: Customer feedback is an under utilized asset.

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

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(Includes the data)

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

2012 Temkin Web Experience Ratings

Temkin Group has just released the 2012
We introduced the Temkin Web Experience Ratings last year. The 2012 Web Experience Ratings include 159 companies from 18 industries and is based on a survey of 10,000 U.S. consumers.

Congratulations to the top firms in this year’s ratings: Amazon, credit unions, USAA, PNC, Southwest Airlines, eBay, Sam’s Club, ShopRite, JCPenney, and ING Direct. Of course, not every company has earned good web experience, especially the companies at the bottom of the 2012 ratings:  Charter Communications, Humana, Qwest, Cigna, Time Warner Cable, Anthem, Road Runner, Medicare, Blue Shield of CA, and TracFone.

We also  examined industry averages and found that banks and investment firms have earned the highest Temkin Web Experience Ratings followed by hotel chains and retailers. But consumers gave very low ratings to Internet service providers, health plans, and TV service providers.

The research also examines how individual companies are rated relative to their industry peers. The following 11 firms outscored their industry average Temkin Web Experience Ratings by 10 percentage points or more: Kaiser Permanente, Amazon, ShopRite, Southwest Airlines, USAA, Starbucks, H.E.B., Publix, credit unions, Marriott, and Apple.

The following 15 companies fell 10 percentage points or more below their industry averages: Wells Fargo Advisors, AAA, Charter Communications, Delta Airlines, Citibank, Bank of America, Humana, TracFone, Qwest, Old Navy, U.S. Airways, Rite Aid, Kohl’s, Kmart, and Charter Communications.

Temkin Group also analyzed changes from the 2011 Temkin Web Experience Ratings. Led by TV service providers and insurance carriers 11 of the 12 industries that were in both the 2011 and 2012 ratings improved since last year.

Seventy-two percent of companies that were in the 2011 and 2012 Temkin Web Experience Ratings showed improvement. Led by Comcast (Internet and TV service), Allstate, AOL, Charter Communications, Toshiba, and Sam’s Club, 20 companies improved by 10 percentage points or more between 2011 and 2012. Only three companies­— Kohl’s, TracFone, and Rite Aid—declined by 10 percentage points or more during that timeframe.

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: Web experience is not good enough for how important it is

Chevy Dealers Deliver Best Customer Experience in Auto Industry

This post examines the 1o auto dealers included in the 2012 Temkin Experience Ratings.

Chevrolet was the top rated auto dealer and the only one to receive a “good” customer experience rating, and 57th overall out of the 206 companies in the ratings. Three auto dealers were next in line with “okay” ratings: Toyota, BMW, and Honda. The remaining six auto dealers earned “poor” ratings with Kia falling to the bottom of the list.

The average rating for the overall auto industry placed it 14^th among 18 industries, only outpacing health plans, Internet service providers, TV service providers, and computer makers.

Looking across the three components of the Temkin Experience Ratings, Toyota leads in functional experience and Dodge is at the bottom; Chevy and BMW lead in accessible experience and Hyundai is at the bottom; and Chevy leads in emotional experience and Kia is at the bottom.

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: Chevy dealers are setting the CX pace in the auto industry

Off Topic: Who’s Watching Football Today?

It’s the most important day in U.S. sports, Superbowl Sunday. As you can see from my choice of graphics, I’m rooting for the Patriots. So let me say up front: Go Pats!

Given the importance of this day, I decided to do a bit of analysis on who actually watches football. In a recent Temkin Group survey, we asked 10,000 U.S. consumers about their sports preferences. It turns out that football is the favorite sport by a wide margin. Fifty-seven percent of Americans like to watch football, which outpaces second place baseball by more than 20 percentage points.

I dug a bit deeper into the consumers that enjoy watching football. It’s not much of a surprise, but men are much more avid fans of football than females across all age groups. The largest gender gap is with males and females between 65 and 74 years old. It also turns out that older consumers are the most interested in football.

I also took a look at the customer bases of 249 large companies to see how many of them enjoy watching football. Led by Sheraton, Residence Inn, Holiday Inn Express, Infiniti, and Avis, 16 companies have at least 20% more than the national average of football enthusiasts. These companies should would probably do well taking out a Superbowl ad.

The bottom line: There will be a lot of people watching the Superbowl (and, go Pats!)