Discover Earns Top Customer Experience Rating for Credit Cards

We recently released the 2017 Temkin Experience Ratings that ranks the customer experience of 331 companies across 20 industries based on a survey of 10,000 U.S. consumers.

Discover delivers the best customer experience in the credit card industry, according to the 2017 Temkin Experience Ratings.

Discover took the top spot out of the 11 credit card issuers included in this year’s ratings, earning a score of 78% and coming in 28^th place overall out of 331 companies across 20 industries. American Express and USAA tied for second place, each receiving a score of 73% and ranking 90^th overall.

USAA and Discover Earn Top Customer Experience Ratings in Credit Cards

We recently released the 2016 Temkin Experience Ratings that ranks the customer experience of 294 companies across 20 industries based on a survey of 10,000 U.S. consumers.

USAA and Discover deliver the best customer experience in the credit card industry, according to the 2016 Temkin Experience Ratings, an annual customer experience ranking of companies based on a survey of 10,000 U.S. consumers.

Out of the 11 credit card issuers evaluated, USAA was the highest rated for the sixth year in a row, earning a 69% rating and placing 60^th overall out of 294 companies across 20 industries. However, despite receiving the highest score in the industry, USAA also declined by the most percentage points over the past year, dropping by 11 points between 2015 and 2016. This dramatic fall enabled Discover to come in a close second, with a rating of 68% and placing 69^th overall.

At the other end of the spectrum, HSBC was the lowest-rated credit card issuer for the fourth straight year, receiving a 45% rating and an overall ranking of 274^th.

Overall, the credit card industry averaged a 63% rating in the 2016 Temkin Experience Ratings and placed 6^th out of 20 industries. The average rating of the industry decreased by four percentage points between 2015 and 2016.

Here are some additional findings from the credit card industry:

USAA Leads Credit Cards in Customer Experience

We recently released the 2015 Temkin Experience Ratings that ranks the customer experience of 293 companies across 20 industries based on a survey of 10,000 U.S. consumers.

For the fifth straight year, USAA took the top spot in credit cards with a rating of 80%, placing it 13^th overall out of 293 companies across 20 industries. USAA has been the highest-rated credit card issuer since the Ratings began in 2011. Discover and American Express tied for second place, each with a rating of 73% and an overall ranking of 76^th. At the other end of the spectrum, HSBC was the lowest-rated credit card issuer for the third year in a row, with a rating of 54% and an overall ranking of 253^rd.

Here are some highlights from the credit card industry:

• Overall, the credit card issuers industry averaged a 67% rating in the 2015 Temkin Experience Ratings and placed 6th overall out of 20 industries.
• The ratings of all credit card issuers in the 2015 Temkin Experience Ratings are as follows: USAA (80%), Discover (73%), American Express (73%), Barclaycard (69%), Chase (68%), Citigroup (66%), Capital One (66%), S. Bank (66%), Bank of America (63%), Wells Fargo (61%), PNC (58%), and HSBC (54%).
• USAA (+3 points), HSBC (+3 points), Discover (+2 points), American Express (+2 points), and Barclaycard (+1 points) all improved their ratings between 2014 and 2015.
• Wells Fargo (-7 points), Capital One (-3 points), and S. Bank (-2 points) declined by the most percentage-points between 2014 and 2015.

USAA Leads Credit Card Industry in 2014 Temkin Experience Ratings

We recently released the 2014 Temkin Experience Ratings that ranks the customer experience of 268 companies across 19 industries based on a survey of 10,000 U.S. consumers.

USAA continued its four-year reign as the highest-rated credit card issuer, earning a 77% rating and placing 33^rd out of 268 companies across 19 industries. Discover and American Express tied for second with a 71% rating each and a rank of 83^rd overall. At the other end of the spectrum, HSBC spent its first year in the Temkin Experience Ratings as the lowest ranked of the 11 credit card issuers, landing in 254^th place overall with a 51% rating.

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Here are some additional findings from the credit card industry:

Report: What Happens After a Good or Bad Experience, 2014

We just published a Temkin Group report, What Happens After a Good or Bad Experience, 2014. The report, which includes 19 data charts, examines which companies and industries provide the most bad experiences, what impact those experiences have on spending, and how the negative impacts of bad experiences can be mitigated by good service recovery. The report also examines how consumers share their good and bad experiences with companies as well as with other people. Here’s the executive summary:

To understand the effect of good and bad experiences, we asked 10,000 U.S. consumers about their recent interactions with 268 companies across 19 industries. Results show that Internet services and TV services are the industries most likely to deliver a bad experience to their customers, while grocery chains are the least likely to. At the company level, Scottrade had the smallest percentage of customers reporting a recent bad experience with the company and Time Warner Cable had the highest. More than half of the customers who encountered a bad experience at a fast food chain, credit card issuer, grocery store, or hotel either decreased their spending with the company or stopped altogether. However, our data shows that a good service recovery effort can help mitigate a bad experience. Unfortunately, many firms—especially in the banking, Internet services, and TV services sectors—aren’t very good at service recovery. In addition to the consequences of bad interactions, we also examined which channels customers use to share their good and bad experiences and how these changed across age groups. We then compared these results to survey responses from the past two years. We also uncovered a negative bias inherent in how customers provide feedback. ING Direct, Residence Inn, and Fairfield Inn have the most negative bias in the feedback they receive directly from customers, while Hy-Vee and Hyundai have the most negative bias on Facebook. 

Click link to see full list of industries and companies covered in this report (.pdf).

Download report for $195

One of the most interesting analyses in the report is the look at how service recovery after a bad experience affects the spending pattern of consumers. Here’s a summary of one of the charts showing just how important it is for a company to recover well after making a mistake:

Here are some other insights from the research:

• Sixteen percent of consumers who have interacted with TV service and Internet service providers report having a bad experience over the previous six months. Next on the list are wireless carriers, with 12% of their customers reporting a bad experience. At the other end of the spectrum, only 3% of consumers report a bad experience with grocery chains and 4% report having a bad experience with fast food chains.
• The five companies with the most customers reporting bad experiences are Time Warner Cable (25%), Motel 6 (22%), Coventry Health Care (21%), and Comcast (21%). There were 10 companies with only 1% or less of their customers reporting bad experiences: Scottrade, Chick-fil-A, H.E.B., Whole Foods, ShopRite, ING Direct, Starbucks, Trader Joe’s, Vanguard, and True Value.
• More than one-quarter of consumers who have a bad experience stop spending with computer makers, car rental agencies, credit card issuers, hotel chains, and software companies. The impact of bad experiences is less costly for parcel delivery services, wireless carriers, health plans, TV service providers, Internet service providers, and grocery chains, as less than 15% of their customers with bad experience stopped spending.
• The industries that are the best at responding to a bad experience are investment firms, major appliances, retailers, and car rental agencies. The industries that are the worst at responding to a bad experience are TV service providers, wireless carriers, Internet service providers, parcel delivery services, and health plans.
• Thirty-two percent of consumers give feedback directly to companies after a very bad experience and 23% give feedback after a very good experience.
• Overall, 25- to 34-year-olds are the most likely to share feedback about their experiences. After a good experience 57% tell a friend directly, 28% share on Facebook, and 18% put a comment or rating on a review site. After a bad experience, 60% tell a friend directly, 31% share on Facebook, and 20% write a review.

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The bottom line: Make sure to recover quickly after a bad experience

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.

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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:

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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.