2012 Temkin Customer Service Ratings
June 27, 2012 4 Comments
Temkin Group has just released the 2012…
The 2012 Customer Service Ratings covers 174 companies from 18 industries and is based on a survey of 10,000 U.S. consumers in January 2012.
Congratulations to the 2012 customer service leaders:
1) Publix
1) Hy-Vee
1) Credit unions
4) Chick-fil-A
5) H.E.B
5) Sam’s Club
7) Winn-Dixie
8) ShopRite
8) Aldi
8) Starbucks
8) Giant Eagle
8) JCPenney
At the other end of the spectrum, consumers gave the lowest ratings to Charter Communications, Time Warner Cable, Comcast, Citibank, Qwest, Road Runner, Cigna, and Bank of America.
The ratings covers the following industries: Airlines, appliance makers, auto dealers, banks, car rental agencies, computer makers, credit card issuers, fast food chains, grocery chains, health plans, hotel chains, insurance carriers, Internet service providers, investment firms, parcel delivery services, retailers, TV service providers, and wireless carriers.
Temkin Group examined industry averages and found that grocery chains were the only industry to earn a “strong” rating. Retailers, fast food chains, appliance makers, and investment firms round out the top five. But consumers gave very low ratings to TV service providers and Internet service providers.
The research also examines how individual companies are rated relative to their industry peers. Led by credit unions (banks), Kaiser Permanente (health plans), Bright House Networks (TV service), and American Express (credit cards), 15 companies outperformed their industry average Temkin Customer Service Ratings by 10 percentage points or more.
Sixteen firms fell below their industry average by 10 or more percentage points, with Charter Communications (TV service & Internet service), Citibank (banks), Hyundai (auto dealers), Bank of America (banks), and Super 8 (hotels) falling the farthest behind.
Temkin Group also analyzed changes from the 2011 Temkin Customer Service Ratings. Led by computer makers and health plans, 10 of the 12 industries that were in both the 2011 and 2012 ratings improved since last year.
Seventy-five percent of companies that were in the 2011 and 2012 Temkin Customer Service Ratings showed improvement. Fifteen organizations improved by at least 10 percentage points, with these five firms leading the way with improvements of at least 20 percentage points: PNC, Gateway, Toshiba, Farmers, and HSBC. Only two companies had double-digit declines: Edward Jones and Old Navy.
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
About Bruce Temkin, CCXP
Customer Experience Matters® 
Really interesting Bruce. It’s always amazing to me how corporations can work and spend so much on advertising and brand building and then completely undermine it through their lack of understanding of the importance of the customer experience.
Wow,customer services for all business is very important for sure they got a lot of customer satisfaction,in Finland their is some contact center company providing best of best for their customer service to get customer loyalty and become leads.I am glad to see this survey.
Hi Bruce,
It would be nice to see Utilities in the industry mix to see how they perform as a group. As you know, they are going through a transformation with the deregulated ones being forced to make improvements, but many still aren’t able to make the leap from customer service being a cost center to it being an asset
Hi Chirag: Thanks for the feedback. I think you;re right about utilities becoming increasingly more interesting for the ratings. They will not be a part of the 2013 Temkin Ratings, but we will consider them again for next year.