Amazon has retained the top spot in the UK Customer Satisfaction Index (UKCSI), published today by The Institute of Customer Service. With a customer satisfaction score of 86.7 points (out of 100) this is the sixth consecutive time consumers have rated Amazon number one.
Eight non-food retailers make up this year’s top 20, and the retail sector performed better than any other boasting an average score of 82.2, against a backdrop of challenges that continue apace for high street brands. The food retail sector performed best after non-food retail with an average score of 81.2. Iceland took the top spot for the first time, whilst also claiming the title of most improved supermarket, having climbed 26 places in the rankings in just six months.
Four financial institutions made the top 10 organisations, with Yorkshire Bank scoring highest, followed by first direct and Nationwide. The banking sector overall performed better than ever before, reaching a score of 80.4 and exceeding the UK all sector average score of 77.9. The Institute warns ‘survival of the fittest will be driven by how well customers are served’. After a steady increase in the first five years of the last decade, the latest UKCSI shows levels of UK customer satisfaction across all brands peaked in 2012/13 and have largely plateaued since.
The UKCSI is the national measure of UK customer satisfaction. It rates customer satisfaction at a national, sector and organisational level across 13 sectors, incorporating the views of 10,000 consumers. More than 30 different customer measures are surveyed, such as staff professionalism, the quality and efficiency of the service, trust and transparency scores, the actual customer experience and complaint handling, are factored into the results. It is published twice a year, in January and July.
Jo Causon, CEO of The Institute for Customer Service said: “The stagnation in customer service levels should be of concern for the UK economy. This comes at a time when, just nine months from Brexit, we need more than ever before to show that Britain is a great place to do business with and in. Alongside tangible financial measures, trust, reputation and recommendation are crucial benefits of a deliberate and consistent focus on achieving high levels of customer satisfaction. The UKCSI shows that customers who give the highest ratings for customer satisfaction, express strong levels of loyalty, which brands will need in difficult and unpredictable market conditions.”
This UKCSI’s top organisations are rated favourably for measures of customer effort, trust, ease of contact, employee helpfulness and competence, speed of response, getting things right first time and complaint handling. The top 50 rated organisations in July 2018’s UKCSI are:
1. Amazon.co.uk
2. John Lewis Retail
3. = Next Retail, Yorkshire Bank
5. = first direct, Nationwide Building Society
7. Tesco Mobile
8. = M&S Bank, Wilko Retail
10. Iceland
11. Netflix
12. Specsavers
13. Pets at Home
14. = Greggs, Superdrug
16. = Argos, Trivago, Waitrose Retail
19. Nationwide Insurance
20. = Green Flag Services, Jet2holidays.com
22. Aviva
23. = Aldi, M&S (food)
25. = Jet2. LV=
27. Halfords autocentre
28. = eBay, Premier Inn
30. SAGA Insurance
31. Santander
32. M&S
33. = Holland & Barrett, Honda, Kia
36. Caffe Nero
37. = Brittany Ferries, Jaguar
39. = Apple, booking.com, Co-op Insurance, Mini, TSB
44. = giffgaff, More Than, Primark
47. Halifax
48. = Lidl, Subway, Toby Carvery
Notes to editors:
About The Institute of Customer Service
The Institute of Customer Service is the professional body for customer service delivering tangible benefit to organisations and individuals so that our customers can improve their customers’ experience and their own business performance. The Institute is a membership body with a community of over 500 organisational members – from the private, public and third sectors, and over 3,000 individual memberships. For more information about The Institute of Customer Service go to www.instituteofcustomerservice.com.
About UKCSI
UKCSI (UK Customer Satisfaction Index) is The Institute of Customer Service’s national measure of customer satisfaction. It provides insights into the state and direction of customer satisfaction at a national level, across 13 key sectors and for individual organisations. UKCSI was launched by The Institute of Customer Service in 2008. It provides a unique way of measuring the current customer satisfaction of UK customers, as well as trends over time. The July 2017 UKCSI results included in this report are based on 43,500 survey responses. Each response is a completed online questionnaire relating to the customer experience with a specific organisation. These responses are provided by over 10,000 individual customers. The respondents are representative of the UK adult population, according to region, age and gender.
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