The advent of the Internet and, later, mobile devices has made customer service more important than ever for businesses and organizations in a wide range of industries. Customers increasingly expect and demand fast, convenient and high-quality service; and will likely take their business elsewhere in its absence, making it a central aspect of businesses’ competitive strategy.
In order to better understand how the corporate world is progressing in this area and identify best practices Temkin Group, a customer experience (CX) research, consulting and training firm, annually collects feedback from consumers regarding organizations’ customer service skills, evaluates this feedback and presents the results through a website called Temkin Ratings. For the 2015 Temkin Customer Service Ratings, the firm surveyed 10,000 consumers covering 278 companies in 20 industries.
At the top of the list is USAA’s banking business with a rating of 79 percent, while the company’s insurance and credit card businesses placed sixth and eighth, respectively. The remaining companies in the top ten are Chick-fil-A, credit unions, Aldi, Trader Joe’s, Publix, Panera Bread and H-E-B. Note the fact four of these companies are supermarket chains, demonstrating the crucial nature of customer service in a highly competitive sector where consumers can be quick to change their allegiance, and retaining return customers is of utmost importance.
Not surprisingly, TV and Internet services almost dominate the entirety of the bottom of the list. Comcast fell into the last two spots with a 17 percent rating for its respective businesses in both industries, alongside media behemoths like Cox Communications, Charter Communications and Time Warner Cable. However, utility company Con Edison of New York claimed the third-to-last spot. These ratings couldn’t be more clear in showing how large media corporations with monopolies or near-monopolies tend to completely disregard the satisfaction of their customers, and without competitive pressures are able to get away with subpar service.
Customer service ratings can thus be used to judge the success of individual businesses, but also for analyzing how important it is in various industries. As a general rule, organizations that depend on giving a quality customer experience in order to attract their business are of course much more skillful in this area and as a result both the business and consumer win. If the TV and Internet service industries were reorganized in a way that similar levels of competition were in place, surely this same phenomena would arise and these companies would no longer be the butt of almost every joke pertaining to customer service.