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.

Download entire dataset for $295

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.”

Download entire dataset for $295

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.

Companies Don’t Earn The Loyalty Their CX Deserves

Our report The ROI of Customer Experience shows that customer experience is highly correlated to loyalty. The research analyzed the relationship between Temkin Loyalty Ratings and Temkin Experience Ratings (TER) for 206 U.S. companies.

After analyzing the connection between these ratings, we found that some companies seem to have higher loyalty levels than they seem to deserve based on their customer experience while others have lower loyalty levels.

Using that dataset, I compared actual loyalty levels with projected loyalty levels. How? By plugging each company’s experience rating into our regression model to identify what their loyalty rating should be (normalized to their industry average) based on its TER and compared that projected rating with its actual loyalty rating. In the chart below you can see the companies with the largest positive and negative variances from the model’s projections.

The companies with loyalty levels the most above the projections are USAA, Highmark, Medicaid, credit unions, and TriCare. The companies that fall the most below the projections are T-Mobile, BMW, Bosch, AT&T, and Alamo.

Let’s examine USAA as an example. Since it has very high experience ratings compared with its industry peers, our model projects that its loyalty ratings should be at the high end of banks, credit card issuers, and insurance carriers. This analysis shows that USAA’s actual loyalty levels are higher than expected, even after factoring in its wonderful customer experience.

So what?!? There’s nothing inherently good or bad with being above or below the projected loyalty level. There’s no reason to expect companies to fall directly on their projected loyalty levels.

What’s interesting about this analysis is not what’s good or bad, but WHY are some companies so far away from the projected levels. This is where I’ll leave the data behind and offer my interpretation about WHY some companies have higher than projected loyalty while others have lower than projected loyalty:

• Product fit. CX is not the only component of customer value. Companies that have tailored their products and services to better meet customers’needs (like USAA and TriCare) have an even better loyalty level than their CX would suggest. If companies have a poor product offering, then their loyalty may be lower than projected (this may explain Sears and DHL).
• Product quality. If companies have quality problems with their offerings, then they would have lower loyalty levels than their CX deserve (this may explain AT&T, T-Mobile, and Alamo).
• Service expectations. Companies that have premium status (BMW cars and Bosch appliances) often elicit higher expectations from customers, so they don’t earn the loyalty that their CX would suggest and have to work harder.
• Trapped customers. In industries where customers have a hard time switching, a bad experience may not lead to the loyalty decline anticipated by the model; the same type of situation would occur if a company is harder to move away from than it’s competitors (this may explain Medicaid, Medicare, MSN, and EarthLink).
• Commoditization. In industries that have a lot of pricing comparisons, customers may overly focus on price and not award good customer experience with the level of loyalty that the model projects (this may explain Alamo). It can also push consumers that have poor experience to more quickly leave a company for its competitor (this may explain DHL).
• Substitutions. In sitations where customers don’t have a lot of clear alternatives, they will be more loyal to a company than the model suggests (this may explain eBay). A company that relies on self-service may be seen as easier to move from than a company that forms more personal connections with customers (this may explain E*TRADE).
• Emotionality. Sometimes customers develop a strong affinity for a brand that increases loyalty and dampens the negative effect of any poor experiences (this may explain Southwest Airlines and Apple).

These items cover three broad topics: offerings, competitive environment and customer expectations. What do you think causes companies to earn more or less loyalty than their customer experience seems to deserve?

The bottom line: CX is correlated to loyalty, but other things matter as well

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.

Download report for $295
(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

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

2012 Temkin Trust Ratings

Temkin Group has just released the 2012

We introduced the Temkin Trust Ratings last year to gauge which companies are earning this important element of loyalty. The 2012 Temkin Trust Ratings include 206 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: USAA, credit unions, H.E.B., Publix, Chick-fil-A, Sam’s Club, Hy-Vee and BMW. Of course, not every company has earned such a high degree of trust with their customers, especially the companies at the bottom of the 2012 ratings: Charter Communications, Citigroup, Bank of America, HSBC, Time Warner Cable, Comcast, and Qwest.

We also examined industry averages and found that grocery chains have earned the most trust from consumers followed by investment firms, retailers, and parcel delivery services. But consumers do not trust TV service providers, Internet service providers, or credit card issuers.

We examined how individual companies are rated relative to their industry peers. Twenty-one companies are 10 or more percentage points above their industry averages. The ones that are farthest out in front: USAA (34 above credit cards), credit unions (30 above banks), USAA (28 above banks), USAA (22 above insurers), and PNC (21 above banks).

Twenty-nine companies are at least 10 percentage points behind their industry averages. Here are the ones that fall the farthest behind: Bank of America (23 behind banks), Citibank (22 behind banks), Super 8 (19 behind hotels), Charter Communications (18 behind TV service providers),  Days Inn (18 behind hotels), and Citigroup (18 behind credit card issuers).

We also analyzed changes from the 2011 Temkin Trust Ratings. The research shows that consumers are more trusting this year than they were last year. Led by computer makers and insurance carriers, all 12 industries that were in both the 2011 and 2012 Temkin Trust Ratings showed improvement.

Fifty-two of the 139 companies that were in the 2011 and 2012 Temkin Trust Ratings earned double-digit improvements and six companies improved by more than 20 percentage points: USAA, PNC, Lenovo, credit unions, U.S. Bank, and HSBC. Seventeen companies lost ground over the last year with the biggest drops coming for Cox Communications, Bank of America, Citigroup, Edward Jones, TriCare, and Costco.

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: It’s hard to succeed without your customers’ trust

2012 Temkin Forgiveness Ratings

Temkin Group has just released the 2012
Every company makes mistakes now and then, but how willing are customers to forgive the company when it happens? Forgiveness is a valuable asset that companies earn by consistently meeting customers’ needs.

We introduced the Temkin Forgiveness Ratings last year to gauge which companies are earning this important element of loyalty. The 2012 Temkin Forgiveness Ratings include 206 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: USAA, Hyatt, credit unions, H.E.B., Hy-Vee, Dollar Rent A Car, Chick-fil-A, Publix, Costco, and Amazon.com. Of course, not every company enjoys such a high degree of forgiveness from their customers, especially the companies at the bottom of the 2012 ratings: Citigroup, Charter Communications, HSBC, Chrysler dealers, EarthLink, Bank of America, Comcast, Quest, and US Airways.

We also examined industry averages and found that grocery chains have earned the most forgiveness from consumers followed by retailers, appliance makers, and parcel delivery services. But consumers are not very likely to forgive mistakes by credit card issuers, Internet service providers, and TV service providers.

We examined how individual companies are rated relative to their industry peers. USAA holds the top two spots, outpacing its credit card and banking peers by more than 30 percentage points. USAA also outpaces the insurance industry by more than 20 percentage points. Credit unions, Hyatt, US Cellular, Dollar Rent A Car, Chick-fil-A, and Bright House Networks are also more than 15 percentage points above their industry averages. Five companies fall 15 or more percentage points below their industry’s average Temkin Forgiveness Ratings: Chrysler dealers, Citigroup, Travelers, Charter Communications, and RadioShack.

We also analyzed changes from the 2011 Temkin Forgiveness Ratings. The research shows that consumers are more forgiving this year than they were last year. Led by banks and insurance carriers, all 12 industries that were in both the 2011 and 2012 Temkin Forgiveness Ratings showed improvement.
Sixty-eight of the 139 companies that were in the 2011 and 2012 Temkin Forgiveness Ratings earned double-digit improvements and four companies improved by more than 25 percentage points: TD Ameritrade, Lenovo, USAA, and credit unions. Ten companies lost ground over the last year with the biggest drops coming for Citigroup, Continental Airlines, Travelers, Sears, Holiday Inn Express, and The Hartford.

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: To err is possible, to earn forgiveness is divine

TracFone Tops Customer Experience Ratings of Wireless Carriers

This post examines the seven wireless carriers included in the 2012 Temkin Experience Ratings.

TracFone was the top rated carrier, but only received an “okay” rating. AT&T, Verizon Wireless, and Sprint also earned “okay” ratings while the remaining carriers were rated “poor.”

The average ratings for the wireless carriers placed it 13th out of 18 industries in the study. Temkin Group also analyzed the changes between 2011 and 2012 and found that customer experience in the wireless industry improved over the previous year. Led by Virgin Mobile and TracFone, all six carriers that were in both the 2011 and 2012 Temkin Experience Ratings had improved ratings. Sprint fell behind the other carriers with only a very slight improvement since last year.

Other highlights from the research include:

• TracFone and Verizon Wireless received the highest Functional ratings, while T-Mobile received the lowest. Virgin Mobile had the largest increase in this area while Sprint had the largest decline.
• TracFone and Verizon Wireless received the highest Accessible ratings, while Virgin Mobile and T-Mobile received the lowest. TracFone had the largest increase in this area while T-Mobile had the largest decline.
• TracFone received the highest Emotional ratings, while T-Mobile and US Cellular received the lowest. Virgin Mobile had the largest increase in this area while T-Mobile had the smallest.

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: Wireless carriers have improved, but they have a long way to go in CX

Report: 2012 Temkin Experience Ratings UK

I’m excited to announce the launch of Temkin Group’s newest offering….

We introduced the Temkin Ratings site in the US last year. The site provides free access to all of our ratings, making it easy to see how consumers rate large companies across a number of dimensions. We decided to extend the Temkin Ratings into the UK with four of our ratings: Experience, Loyalty, Trust, and Forgiveness. You can review all of those ratings from the Temkin Ratings UK site.

As you can see below, we’re also providing the Temkin Experience Ratings report free of charge. We will providing some details around the other ratings in future posts. And, of course, we will be releasing the 2012 ratings in the US later this year — with even more industries.

We just published a new Temkin Group report, 2012 Temkin Experience Ratings UK. Congratulations to the top six companies (out of 66 in the ratings):

1) John Lewis
1) Waitrose
3) Amazon.co.uk
4) Farmfoods
4) Iceland
4) Morrisons

Here is the executive summary from the report:

John Lewis and Waitrose tied for first in the 2012 Temkin Experience Rankings UK, with several other grocery stores and Amazon.com rounding out the top ten. We asked 3,000 British consumers to rate their recent interactions with companies across three dimensions of their experience: functional, accessible, and emotional. These data allowed us to rate 66 companies across seven industries. Only two of those companies received an “excellent” rating, while 26% fell in the “good” category. The results show that retailers and grocery stores deliver the best experience while personal computer manufacturers and insurance companies provide the worst.

Download report for FREE

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

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

Here are the ratings for all 66 companies:

Download report for FREE

Are you interested in getting a deeper look at the data? Or do you want to see the differences in industries across age? Then you should visit Temkin Ratings at www.temkinratings.co.uk.

The bottom line: Customer experience excellence is in short supply.

T-Mobile Loses Customers, No Surprise

T-Mobile just announced that it lost a record number of customers in the first three months of the year. Is that a surprise? No. That’s the fate of most companies that provide subpar customer experience. T-Mobile was rated 114th out of 143 companies in the 2011 Temkin Experience Ratings. And, it was the next to last wireless carrier, only beating out Virgin Mobile.

The place where T-Mobile falls behind the most is in its Functional Experience, meeting customers’ basic needs:

With these types of ratings, T-Mobile needs to go through a systematic overhaul of its customer experience effort. It will take a multi-year journey similar to Sprint’s; changing operational processes and culture. T-Mobile will needs to improve in all four customer experience competency areas.

The ratings don’t look too good for Virgin Mobile either.

The bottom line: You can’t expect loyalty if you don’t provide consistently good experiences

TracFone Leads In (Poor Group Of) Wireless Experiences

In the 2011 Temkin Experience Ratings, we examined the customer experience across 12 industries. For this post, we will take a closer look at the six wireless carriers in the ratings.

Wireless carriers have an average rating of “Poor” and was the 8th ranked industry out of 12…

Let’s take closer look at the results for all of the individual wireless carriers…

As you can see, TracFone, Sprint, and AT&T barely cross into the “Okay” customer experience rating. The remaining three carrriers, Verizon Wireless, T-Mobile, and Virgin Mobile are in the “Poor” range.

Let’s take a look at the three components of the Temkin Experience Ratings…

TracFone is the top-performing carrier when it comes to functional and emotional experience, but falls behind four other carriers in the accessible component. While none of the carriers crossed the line of goodness for the accessible component of our ratings, Sprint comes out as the easiest to do business with. Virgin Mobile takes the bottom spot for both emotional and accessible components and T-Mobile falls well behind the other carriers in its functional experience.

The bottom line: Wireless carriers need to deliver better experiences

Download this post for printing or sharing

Engaging Gen Y With Immediacy

We just published a report called Engage Gen Y Online With Immediacy which examines one of the four design approaches that we’ve outlined for reaching Gen Y: Immediacy (the others design approaches are Gen Y literacy, individualism, and interactivity). The research examined the online experiences of a handful of retailers, auto insurers, auto makers, and wireless carriers to find positive examples of the following three strategies for immediacy:

1. Refresh and update content constantly. Changing content frequently and updating feature page elements on a regular basis give users a reason to return over time.
2. Expose value immediately. Delivering clear calls to action and interactive cues help draw young visitors into experiences right away.
3. Provide frequent feedback. Presenting notifications, rewards, and other feedback to users throughout an experience keeps them alert and engaged.

Here are some examples of immediacy best practices that we found:

• AT&T displays updated lists of its newest and most popular phones.
• Several insurers start the quoting process right on their homepages.
• Old Navy provides an online only “sneak peak” at upcoming styles.
• Victoria’s Secret’s “Dress Shop” section provides pictures of products as users roll over navigation options for dress types.
• Zappos’ checkout highlights that some items are almost out of stock.
• Scion’s “Tweaks Of The Week” showcases vehicle modifications submitted by actual Scion owners.
• Old Navy engages users with recommendations to “complete the outfit.”
• Allstate provides a quick path to value by offering the choice to “get ballpark estimates without giving your name.”
• T-Mobile provides an interactive slider and buttons on its homepage to select plans.

I need to give a shout out to Andrew McInnes who was the researcher on this project (which means he did most of the work) and to Ross Popoff-Walker who worked with me on defining the Gen Y design strategies. 

The bottom line: Give Gen Y what they want: immediate gratification.

T-Mobile’s “Family Allowances” Showcases Online Infusion

T-Mobile recently introduced a new feature called “Family Allowances” that provides online controls to help parents monitor and manage their kids’ phone usage. The features, which customers can control from the T-Mobile Website, include:

• Setting limits for messages, minutes, and downloads for each phone
• Defining the times of day when a phone can be used, or not used
• Establishing “Always Allowed” numbers (like calling home) that work even when the limits are exceeded, and blocking other numbers

My take: This is another great example of a disruptive customer experience strategy that I call online infusion (designing offerings that natively incorporate online capabilities as part of the core product definition). These features go beyond the basic definition of of a wireless service, which usually just focuses on the features of the handset and the network, to address a broader set of needs for a specific customer segment: parents of young kids. The feature incorporates online controls as a core piece of the offering, instead of just using the Web as a channel for researching, buying, and getting customer service.

The “Family Allowances” plan incorporates features similar to a previous service called Disney Mobile that Disney built using the Sprint/Nextel network. I really liked the features of that offering, but the business did not work out in the US (it’s still operating in Japan). It makes more sense for existing carriers like T-Mobile to incorporate those features into their offerings, then to create an entirely new carrier.

Other online infusion examples that I’ve discussed in this blog include the Kindle, NetFlix, and Webkinz. To develop your own disruptive strategies, take a look at this post: Customer Experience Innovation: As Simple As 1-2-3.

The bottom line: As more consumers get more comfortable doing more things online, there will be an abundance of opportunities for online infusion.

Play.com Tops UK Customer Experience Index

Last November we introduced Forrester’s Customer Experience Index in the US, with Costco and Borders taking the top 2 spots. Using the same methodology to examine three key elements of customer experience (usefulness, ease of use, and enjoyability), we recently published the The UK Customer Experience Index, 2008.

Based on a survey of nearly 1,200 UK consumers, we ranked 25 firms. Here are some of the details:

• Top five in the rankings:
  • Play.com [#1]
  • Amazon UK [#2]
  • John Lewis [#3]
  • ASDA [#4]
  • Tesco [#5]
• Bottom five in the rankings:
  • British Gas [#25]
  • AOL [#24]
  • Virgin/NTL Telewest [#23]
  • BT Internet/Openworld [#22]
  • Vodafone [#21]
• Retailers took the top 8 spots, but here are the leaders in other sectors:
  • Banking: Lloyds TSB [#8]
  • Mobile: T-Mobile [#17]
  • ISP: BT Internet/Openworld [#22]

We’ll be fielding the survey again in the US in a few months, so keep your eyes out for Forrester’s second annual Customer Experience Index later this year.

The bottom line: There’s room for customer experience improvements everywhere.