It’s that time of year again: time
for the University of Michigan's American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) report on e-commerce. The e-commerce report includes the e-retail, online travel, and online brokerage industries.
You can download the full report here, but a
few things I found most interesting:
- Amazon has the second
highest score in the entire ACSI (which includes 200+ companies), behind only
Heinz. That is a stunning achievement for a retailer with such a broad mission.
- Online travel
aggregators like Expedia, Travelocity, and Orbitz continue to slip and are
having significant trouble differentiating themselves from each
other.
- Online brokerage does
better than expected, given the slowing economy (which usually results in lower
satisfaction with any kind of investing). Customer satisfaction with
Fidelity.com rises 5%, while Charles Schwab.com and TDAmeritrade.com also report
increased satisfaction.
- Of all the sectors
measured by the ACSI this quarter, e-commerce was the only one to increase. All
other sectors saw customer satisfaction scores fall, and the overall ACSI score
for the whole economy fell this quarter. I attribute this to the fact that
competition is so fierce in the online world that companies HAVE to excel in
order to survive. The best competitive differentiator is customer satisfaction.
Still, it’s remarkable that the e-commerce sector now outperforms all other
service sectors measured by the ACSI, online and
offline.
You can read more in the Detroit
Free Press and Network World.
