Amazon tops the charts for customer satisfaction
Online retail giant Amazon has come top for customer satisfaction for the second year running according to the latest UK Customer Satisfaction Index from The Institute of Customer Service.
ASOS, the online fashion retailer, came in second place followed by John Lewis, M&S Food and Waitrose. Other retailers in the top ten included Greggs and Iceland.
Published twice a year, the UKCSI rates customer satisfaction after taking into account the views of 10,000 consumers on considerations such as staff professionalism, quality, efficiency and complaint handling.
In the most recent survey, non-food retailers performed strongest out of all sectors with an average score of 82.5. Amazon and ASOS scored 87.3 and 85.8 respectively.
The food retail sector had an average score of 81.3 with M&S scoring highest with 85.0. Tesco was the most improved supermarket chain, increasing its rating by 1.2 points.
Across the board, average customer satisfaction scores improved by 0.8 year-on-year to 77.8 in January 2017. Consumers aged 65 and over were found to be the most ‘satisfied’, with those aged 25 to 34 the least.
Despite the positive results, the UKCSI also shows that the gap between the highest performing organisations and the lowest is narrowing.
Jo Causon, chief executive of The Institute of Customer Service, said: “Generally speaking, it’s been a better year for customer service, with consumers telling us that businesses are improving overall experiences by getting things right first time and dealing with complaints faster and more efficiently.
“However, these factors do not necessarily translate into customer loyalty and recommendation. Just being ‘good’ is no longer good enough, and organisations should think about how they can deliver outstanding service at all times.
“With 51% of people saying that it has taken them more than two attempts to get a problem fixed, the evidence suggests that customers still feel that they’re spending too much time and effort dealing with businesses. To turn this around a greater focus should be given to making things easier and less cumbersome for customers.”
Causon said companies need to achieve more consistency across different channels as well as engagement through digital methods such as email, text, apps and webchat functions.
She added: “These are the channels through which it’s most difficult for customer service staff to show empathy. Organisations therefore need to make sure that their staff are highly engaged and highly skilled, as every customer interaction – regardless of the channel it’s on – counts towards business performance.”
