Lexus and Kia Earn Top Customer Experience Ratings for Auto Dealers

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.

Lexus and Kia deliver the best customer experience across auto dealers, according to the 2017 Temkin Experience Ratings, an annual customer experience ranking of companies based on a survey of 10,000 U.S. consumers.

Lexus took the top spot out of the 21 auto dealers included in this year’s ratings, earning a score of 77% and coming in 38^th place overall out of 331 companies across 20 industries. Kia came in second place with a score of 74% and an overall rank of 74^th, only narrowly ahead of both Chevrolet and Toyota, each of which received a rating of 73% and came in 90^th place overall.

Toyota and Mercedes-Benz Earn Top Customer Experience Ratings for Auto Dealers

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.

Toyota and Mercedes-Benz deliver the best customer experience amongst auto dealers, according to the 2016 Temkin Experience Ratings, an annual ranking of companies based on a survey of 10,000 U.S. consumers.

Out of the 20 auto dealers included in this study, Toyota earned the highest customer experience score with a rating of 66%, which put it in 89^th place overall out of 294 companies across 20 industries. Mercedes-Benz came in a close second with a 65% rating and an overall rank of 100^th.

Toyota is no stranger to the top; it has been the highest-scoring auto dealer for three out of the past five years and come in second place the other two years. Mercedes-Benz, on the other hand, has historically stayed in the middle of the pack, ascending to the top this year by virtue of being one of only three companies whose scores improved over the past year. The other two companies whose ratings went up since 2015 are Kia and Audi.

At the other end of the spectrum, Volkswagen received the lowest score in the industry with a rating of 44%, which put it in 278^th place overall. Volkswagen’s score tumbled a dramatic 17 percentage points over the last year—the biggest decline of any company in any industry.

Lexus and Toyota Lead Auto Dealers 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.

Here are some highlights from the auto dealer results between 2012 and 2015:

• Auto dealers’ average rating dropped from 66.3% in 2014 to 63.7% in 2015, the lowest score they’ve had since 2012. This is also the first year that the industry average has declined for auto dealers.
• Despite dropping one percentage-point from last year, Lexus is still the highest-rated auto dealer, with a score of 73%. Lexus also boasts the highest score in the emotion component, as its 70% rating is 12.6 percentage-points above industry average. Toyota dealers were close behind at 71%, but dropped 3 points from last year.
• Subaru not only experienced the sharpest decline of any auto dealer, but it actually experiences the sharpest decline of any company in the Ratings. Between 2014 and 2015, Subaru’s rating dropped 16 percentage-points, from 73% down to 57% over the past year.
• Audi received the lowest rating of any auto dealer, scoring 53% and coming in 261^st place out of 293 companies.
• Auto dealer’s ratings decreased more dramatically than any other industry’s. Of the five companies in the entire Ratings whose scores declined the most between 2014 and 2015, three of the companies are auto dealers. Subaru’s rating went down by 16 percentage-points, Buick’s went down by 12 percentage-points, and Audi’s went down by 11 percentage-points. At the other end of the spectrum, Dodge saw one of the largest score increases over the past year, going up 8 percentage points between 2014 and 2015.
• Of the twenty auto dealers that we evaluated both in 2014 and in 2015, only five improved their scores over the past year: Dodge (+8 points), Chrysler (+4 points), Nissan (+3 points), Kia (+3 points), and Honda (+2 points).

Off Topic: Ford Has The Most NFL Fans

In one of our recent benchmark studies, we asked consumers what professional sports, if any, they like to watch on TV. Since we’re at the beginning of the NFL season, I decided to take a look at the make-up of NFL fans. Yes, I have data on demographics such as age, income, education, etc. But I’ll share some of that later in the season.

For now, I decided to look at which companies have customers who are the most and the least interested in the NFL. The companies that have the highest percentage of NFL fans are Ford, TD Ameritrade, MSN, Lexus, Chrysler, Charles Schwab, and Dodge. It’s no surprise that many of these firms pay for commercial time during the football games.

Which organizations would reach the lowest percentage of their customers with NFL TV ads? Optimum, Ross, Dollar Tree, Medicaid, and ShopRite.

The bottom line: Since this is an off-topic post, I’ll show my bias: Go Patriots!

 

Toyota, Buick, and Lexus Lead Auto Dealers 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.

Toyota, Buick, and Lexus all earned a 74% rating—only narrowly surpassing Subaru—and tied for 59^th place overall out of 268 companies across 19 industries. While this is both Buick’s and Lexus’s first time evaluated in the Ratings, this is Toyota’s second straight year in the top spot.

At the other end of the spectrum, Chrysler tumbled down the rankings from its “okay” rating in 2013 to a “poor” rating this year, finishing as the lowest-ranking auto dealer with a score of 50% and a ranking of 256^th place. Kia and Dodge also declined in the ratings and received “poor” scores of 57% and 55% respectively, both hovering near the bottom of the auto industry rankings for the third year in a row.

Download entire dataset for $395

Here are some additional findings from the auto 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.

Download report for $195

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

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!)

Customer Service Champs From BusinessWeek

In its current issue “Extreme Customer Service,” BusinessWeek published it’s annual report on customer service which ranks the “Customer Service Champs.” Here are the top 10 on the list:

1. AMAZON.COM
2. USAA
3. JAGUAR
4. LEXUS
5. THE RITZ-CARLTON
6. PUBLIX SUPER MARKETS
7. ZAPPOS.COM
8. HEWLETT-PACKARD
9. T. ROWE PRICE
10. ACE HARDWARE

While we didn’t evaluate the same group of companies, there’s an overlap between this list and Forrester’s customer experience rankings. In our rankings, Amazon.com came in 4th and USAA came in 2nd. That’s not a surprise; customer service is often a key component of an overall customer experience strategy (look for an upcoming post that explores the difference between customer service and customer experience).

I’m quoted in the article “Customer Service in a Shrinking Economy” which discusses customer service in this economic environment (note: take a look at my posts about managing in a recession). It’s an execellent article; full of examples from companies like Zappos, Four Seasons, USAA, and Schwab.  

While we’re discussing customer service, don’t forget my “CARES” model:

• Communication (clearly communicate the process and set expectations)
• Accountability (take responsibility for fixing the problem or getting an answer)
• Responsiveness (don’t make the customer wait for your communication or a solution)
• Empathy (acknowledge the impact that the situation has on the customer)
• Solution (at the end of the day, make sure to solve the issue or answer the question)

The bottom line: Congratulations to the customer service champs!